The Price of Glory (28 page)

Nathan concluded that he would not have embarked upon such a detailed exposition if the cause was as hopeless as it appeared. “So where does that leave the western territories of North America?” he enquired.

“On the table, as they say. Negotiations continue. Certain pressures may be brought to bear. You must understand that the Casa di San Giorgio has been controlled by the same families since the Middle Ages and they are not always in agreement; far from it. The Brignole and Spinola are thought to favour the French interest. The Doria and the Grimaldi are much opposed. It is unfortunate that the Convention thought fit to expel the Grimaldis from Monaco where they have been its princes for some hundreds of years. And to make matters worse the daughter-in-law of the last prince was a victim of the guillotine on the last day of the Terror … Have I said something to alarm you?” he added, for Nathan had started and was staring at him with a curious expression.

“I am sorry.” Nathan took a moment to gather his thoughts. “I had just remembered something.”

The last day of the Terror, when he had followed Gillet to the Hôtel de Ville with murder in his heart, ignorant that Sara was even then on her way to the guillotine. Had this woman, this Princess of Monaco, been with her at the time? His information was that two women had fled from the death carts but one of them had been recaptured and dragged back to the scaffold.

He forced his mind back to the present. “And in the meantime—your advice to Madame Tallien?”

“You are thinking of Imlay's investments, naturally. Well, in the meantime, I am afraid that they, too, must stay ‘on the table.' However, I am urged to use what means I can of prolonging your stay in Paris.”

He smiled disarmingly but Nathan could not help but wonder if the banker had now become his jailer; surely he would never have taken Nathan into his confidence if there were the slightest chance of his leaving Paris.

“It would be a pleasure,” he replied, though he was already wondering how to contrive his escape from the city; he had, after all, discovered all that was asked of him, and with Gillet breathing down his neck he could not afford to push his luck.

Ouvrard stood. “Splendid. We will do our best to make your stay as pleasurable as possible. Indeed, I am instructed to invite you to a late supper at the house of Madame de Beauharnais, if you are not too fatigued.”

Nathan groaned inwardly, for it
had
been a fatiguing day and though he would have been ashamed to admit it, the charms of Madame de Beauharnais paled in comparison to a quiet evening at White's Hotel. But he put a brave face on it and mentioned only that he would welcome the opportunity to change his shirt and splash a little water on his face.

“My dear sir, you must avail yourself of my wardrobe. And, my valet, too. No, I insist. I have shirts of every size and description. I will instruct the good Anton to bring you a selection.”

Nathan could not help wondering if Ouvrard had bought a job lot from those obliged to part with them at approximately the same time they had been forced to part with their heads, but they were of good quality and not a trace of blood upon them and so, washed, shaved and made as presentable as the good Anton could contrive in the time available to him, Nathan joined Ouvrard in his carriage for the short journey to the house of Madame de Beauharnais.

“It is a modest little townhouse near the Palais Egalité,” Ouvrard informed him, “but quite charming. And perhaps I should warn you that suppers
à la Beauharnais
are apt to be a little, well …
theatrical
.”

Nathan eyed him warily. “In what way ?” He imagined party games, possibly of a rather lewd nature. He was not far wrong.

“Well, sometimes there is dancing.”

“That does not sound too outrageous.”

“Upon the table.”

“Ah.”

“And on the last occasion Madame Tallien took off her clothes.”

“I see. All of them?”

“All of them. Though, as you may have noticed, she does not wear a great deal at the best of times. There had been comments on the flimsiness of the fabric and she had a wager with one of the other guests that her entire costume did not weigh more than two silver coins. On the instructions of Madame de Beauharnais scales were brought in by a servant and she stripped before the entire party of thirty or forty people. She won the bet.”

“And will Madame Tallien be there tonight?”

“Oh, assuredly. She and Madame de Beauharnais are inseparable.”

“And Monsieur Tallien?”

Ouvrard laughed. “I do not think so. Have you ever met him?”

“No, I do not believe I have had that pleasure.” In fact, they had met briefly on the evening of Ninth Thermidor, when Tallien was celebrating his success in denouncing Robespierre before the National Convention. But in the subsequent, more violent events of that night he had been notable by his absence. Nathan remembered him as a handsome man but with a slightly vacuous look as if he did not quite believe in his own distinction.

“He has been in the Vendée for some months now, helping to repress the local peasantry, but I believe he has lately returned to Paris. However, Madame de Beauharnais cannot stand him and between the two of us I do not believe Madame Tallien can, either. He can be a terrible bore and she tries to keep him away from her friends. Before the Revolution he was a printer's devil, which is to say the apprentice who runs about with the typeface and mixes up the ink. Many of us came from humble origins but his seem to have affected him more than most. He feels obliged to proclaim his virtues in a loud voice, as if he were speaking in the Convention. Then of course someone like Barras feels equally obliged to put him down and he sulks for the rest of the evening.”

Nathan was aware that they had been following the route of the death carts from the Palais de Justice and along the Rue Saint-Honoré. They passed through the old Palais Royale, now the Palais Egalité, with its shops and its cafés, strangely quiet for this time of the evening. Looking through the windows of the carriage he could see the towers of the Louvre and the Tuileries, the new administrative centre of the capital where the Convention now met. But there were so few people about. Was this normal? Then they saw the soldiers. Regular soldiers, marching in good order, behind a mounted officer. Ouvrard had seen them, too. He was looking thoughtful.

“They are heading for the Stock Exchange,” he said.

“Why the Stock Exchange?”

“I imagine to guard it, rather than to close it down. I trust I am not mistaken. It is in the Le Peletier section where the mob has been especially restive of late. I hope there is not going to be trouble.”

“Is it likely ?”

“My dear fellow, the city is like a powder keg. It could go up at any time. The people are angry. Also, hungry. They deplore the price of bread. They deplore the extravagance of their new rulers. They wish to restore the monarchy. They have short memories, it appears.”

Clearly Ouvrard was not overly impressed with the will of the people.

“Does that not trouble you?” Nathan asked.

The banker smiled. “I expect I will survive,” he said.

The carriage turned into a small street off the Rue Saint-Honoré; the Rue Chantereine, another name from the old regime. Nathan saw the heavy street lanterns where the mob used to string up anyone they suspected of being a part of it. In the heyday of the Revolution this had been bandit territory, handy for the agitators in the Palais Royale and the market women from Les Halles with the sharp knives they used for gutting fish and other objects. It was not a part of Paris he knew well. He jerked his head hastily back inside the window as they turned through a narrow archway, almost scraping the sides of the carriage against the crumbling columns, and on into a narrow unpaved lane between high walls and lime trees—Nathan blinked at the rural setting so close to the heart of the city—and finally stopped in a cobbled courtyard. The footman opened the door and let down the steps and Nathan was confronted by stables and a coach house and what appeared to be a neo-Greek pavilion topped by a typical Paris attic with steeply sloping roof.

“Welcome,” said Ouvrard dryly, “to
chez Beauharnais
.”

Stone steps led up to the pavilion where their hostess awaited them in a little semi-circular antechamber. She was dressed, as before, in the Greek fashion but this time the muslin covered her entirely from her neck to her ankles, though her nipples were readily discernible through the thin, close-fitting fabric. She wore her hair
en chignon,
with that thin little blood red ribbon at her throat. Nathan kissed her hands, complimented her on her appearance, expressed delight at her charming abode. Such a surprise, tucked away in the centre of the city.

It was very small, she confided, but she was in love with it; she had not long moved in. It was just about adequate to her needs but everything fitted in like a little doll's house, with a kitchen below ground and attic rooms for the children and the servants. The children? Nathan looked about him warily, lest he step on them but they were not in evidence: tucked neatly away in the attic, probably, row upon row of them on mattresses.

There was but one little bedroom, she continued, but that was enough, was it not, for one little girl? With a roguish chuckle, taking his hand and leading him into the salon.

He walked into a blaze of golden sunlight from two large French windows on the opposite wall and took a moment to adjust his eyes to the glare. Then he saw that the room contained five people: two men and three women. Thérésa was one of them: dressed more decorously than before, in a long muslin gown not unlike that of her hostess but in flaming red, her long black hair unbound and falling freely about her shoulders. She was so stunningly beautiful that Nathan felt a constriction about his chest and throat, even while he made the conventional noises of greeting. The others were introduced. Madame Hamelin, the pug with the body of Venus; another woman called Madame de Coligny who would have been ravishing enough if not cast in the shade of La Tallien. And the two men—a dashing officer of Chasseurs with a startling mass of black curls who was introduced as Lieutenant Murat, and an older man with a long patrician nose and a haughty air, introduced simply as Talma; he turned out to be an actor. An intimate little party, as Madame de Beauharnais described it, with a giggle.

There was, Nathan thought, altogether too much giggling for his comfort. Something of the school-girlish, even conspiratorial, in the manner of the four women, as if they were not used to the company of men, which was ridiculous. Ouvrard detected it, he could tell, and was slightly puzzled by it. He looked about him now and again, as if someone might jump out from behind the curtains. Only Talma seemed entirely at his ease, telling a lengthy story about his part in a play: Voltaire's
Brutus
now running at the Théâtre Français. Naturally he was playing the lead, and during the assassination scene, when he had been about to plunge his knife into Caesar's back, he had tripped over his toga and driven the weapon home with far more power than he had intended, causing his victim to cry out “Jesus Christ!” in a loud voice that had the audience howling with laughter and turned the entire tragedy into farce.

The Hamelin looked a little puzzled at this until it was pointed out to her that Jesus Christ had not been born at the time, at which she went into paroxysms of mirth, as if to make up for her ignorance.

Altogether, Nathan thought, he had spent more relaxed evenings as a junior midshipman in the company of his superiors, though lacking the heady proximity of four gorgeous women in thin cheesecloth. He could barely take his gaze from Thérésa, the tautness of the scarlet fabric drawing his eyes like moths to the flame and with almost as perilous an effect. He ate the first two courses with no clear idea of what they were, spoke nonsense in what seemed to him a stranger's voice and drank far too much wine.

Suddenly he became aware that the four women were standing up.

“And now the surprise,” said Madame de Beauharnais.

Was this where they began to dance upon the table? But no, they were leaving the room. Was dinner over? He was sure he had only had two courses and light ones at that. He tried to catch Ouvrard's eye but he was gazing studiously into his glass. Talma began to hold forth again, another long theatrical anecdote, and then he stopped dead and stared towards the door. Nathan followed his glance and he felt his heart leap into his throat and jam there, choking him.

“Tra la!” Thérésa stood there, quite nude, except for her little red ankle boots and the blood-red ribbon about her throat. She waltzed into the room, twisting round to show that she was as naked behind as she was in front and looking back over her shoulder at them to make sure she had their complete attention, which was indeed the case. Nathan had not previously seen her from behind, even clothed. It was better than he could have imagined.

“Tra la!” Their four heads jerked back to the door as the Hamelin entered, similarly attired. She was not as beautiful as Thérésa but her body was far more voluptuous: a walking, curvaceous scandal. Nathan saw Murat as if the mirror of himself, his eyes staring, his mouth open.

“Tra la!” Madame de Coligny had a hard act to follow but she managed it well enough, being almost as well endowed as the Hamelin. And finally …

Rose. Or the Queen of Hearts, as she announced herself, for as well as the uniform red ankle boots she wore two little hearts, attached by some mysterious means to her nipples and a larger one covering the mound of Venus. It showed a certain comparative prudery that Nathan would not have anticipated. Murat began tentatively to clap but stopped when he realised he was the only one to do so and that the performance was possibly not yet over. Indeed, it had hardly begun.

The four women orbited the table with little dance steps, finally forming a tableau in the dying light of the sun as it poured in through the wide, half-open windows, the Queen of Hearts seeming somewhat overdressed among her nude companions. But not for long. Resting upon Thérésa's shoulder she pulled off first one boot and then the other. Not a breath, not a sigh. Utter silence in the room. The Hamelin plucked a heart from one nipple, the Coligny the other. And Rose herself performed the final unveiling, removing the heart-shaped design from her loins to reveal the darker fabric beyond.