like his mother, in a way never discussed; but he remembered her face, when she sat propped against the bolsters waiting to be butchered, and he remembered how one of the servants had said afterwards that they were going to burn the sheets. You might die like Henriette: alone, your blood pumping out on to white linen, unable to call, unable to move, shocked to death, paralysed – while downstairs, people were making small talk and passing cakes around. You might die like Grandfather Carraut – palsied and decrepit and disgusting, memory gone, fretting about the will, chattering to his under-manager about the age of the wood for the barrels; breaking off, from time to time, to chide the family for faults committed thirty years before, and to curse his pretty dead daughter for her shameful swollen womb. That was not Grandfather’s fault. That was old age. But he couldn’t imagine old age. He couldn’t imagine approaching it.
And if you were hanged? He did not want to think about it. The workaday criminal death could take half an hour.
He tried praying: some beads to keep his mind ordered. But then slipping through his fingers they reminded him of a rope, and he dropped them gently on to the floor. He kept count: ‘Pater noster, qui es in coeli, Ave Maria, Ave Maria’, and that pious addendum, ‘Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto, Amen’. The blessed syllables ran together. They made nonsense words, everted themselves, darted in and out of sense. Anyway, what is the sense? God is not going to tell him what to do. God is not going to help him. He does not believe in a God of that sort. He’s not an atheist, he tells himself: just an adult.
Dawn: he heard the clatter of wheels below the window, the leathery creak of the harness and the snort and whinny of the horse drawing a cart bringing vegetables for those who would still be alive at dinner-time. Priests were wiping their vessels for early Mass, and the household below was rising, washing, boiling water and lighting fires. At Louis-le-Grand, he would have been at his first class by now. Where were they, the children he had known? Where was Louis Suleau? Pursuing his sarcastic path. Where was Fréron? Cutting a swathe through society. And Camille would be sleeping still, this morning, gathered to the city’s dark heart: sleeping unconscious of his perhaps damned soul draped about in muscle and bone.
Brount whined at the door. Charlotte came, called him sharply to come away. Brount’s reluctant paws scrabbled down the stairs.
He unlocked the door to let the barber in. The man looked into the face of his regular, amiable client; he knew better than to try his morning chatter. The clock ticked without compunction towards ten.
It occurred to him at the last moment that he need not go; he could simply sit here and say, I’m not going into court today. They would wait for him for ten minutes, post a clerk to look along the road, and then they would send a message; and he would reply that he was not going into court today.
They could not drag him out, or carry him, could they? They could not force the sentence out of his throat?
But it was the law, he thought wearily, and if he could not carry it out he should have resigned: should have resigned yesterday.
THREE P.M.: the aftermath. He is going to be sick. Here, by the side of the road. He doubles up. Sweat breaks out along his back. He goes down on his knees and retches. His eyes mist over, his throat hurts. But there’s nothing in his stomach; he hasn’t eaten for twenty-four hours.
He puts out a hand, gets to his feet and steadies himself. He wishes for someone to take his hand, to stop him from shivering; but when you are ill, no one comes to help.
If there were anyone to watch his progress along the road they would see that he is staggering, lurching from foot to foot. He tries consciously to stand up straight and put some order in his steps, but his legs feel too far away. The whole despicable body is teaching him a lesson again: be true to yourself.
This is Maximilien de Robespierre, barrister-at-law: unmarried, personable, a young man with all his life before him. Today against his most deeply held convictions he has followed the course of the law and sentenced a criminal to death. And now he is going to pay for it.
A MAN SURVIVES: he comes through. Even here in Arras it was possible to find allies, if not friends. Joseph Fouché taught at the Oratorian College. He had thought of the priesthood but had grown away from the idea. He taught physics, and was interested in anything new. Fouché came to dinner quite often, invited by Charlotte. He seemed to have proposed to her – or at any rate, they had come to some understanding. Max was surprised that any girl would be attracted by Fouché, with his frail, stick-like limbs and almost lashless eyes. Still, who’s to know? He did not like Fouché at all, in point of fact, but Charlotte had her own life to lead.
Then there was Lazare Carnot, a captain of engineers at the garrison; a man older than himself, reserved, rather bitter about the lack of opportunities open to him, as a commoner in His Majesty’s forces. Carnot went for company to the Academy’s meetings, formulae revolving in his head while they discussed the sonnet form. Sometimes he treated them to a tirade about the deplorable state of the army. Members would exchange amused glances.
Only Maximilien listened earnestly – quite ignorant of military matters, and a little overawed.
When Mlle de Kéralio was voted in by the Academy – its first lady member – he made a speech in her honour about the genius of women, their role in literature and the arts. After this she’d said, ‘Why don’t you call me Louise?’ She wrote novels – thousands of words a week. He envied her facility. ‘Listen to this,’ she’d say, ‘and tell me what you think.’
He made sure not to – authors are touchy. Louise was pretty, and she never quite got the ink scrubbed off her little fingers. ‘I’m off to Paris,’ she said, ‘one can’t go on stagnating in this backwater, saving your presences.’ Her hand tapped a rolled sheaf of manuscript against a chair-back. ‘O solemn and wondrous Maximilien de Robespierre, why don’t you come to Paris too? No? Well, at least let’s take off for the afternoon with a picnic. Let’s start a rumour, shall we?’
Louise belonged to the real nobility. ‘Nothing to be thought of there,’ said the Aunts: ‘poor Maximilien.’
‘Noble or not,’ Charlotte said, ‘the girl’s a trollop. She wanted my brother to up and go to Paris with her, imagine.’ Yes, just imagine. Louise packed her bags and hurtled off into the future. He was dimly aware of a turning missed; one of those forks in the road, that you remember later when you are good and lost.
Still, there was Aunt Eulalie’s stepdaughter, Anaïs. Both the Aunts favoured her above all other candidates. They said she had nice manners.
ONE DAY BEFORE LONG the mother of a poor rope-maker turned up at his door with a story about her son who was in prison because the Benedictines at Anchin had accused him of theft. She said the accusation was false and malicious; the Abbey treasurer, Dom Brognard, was notoriously light-fingered, and had in addition tried to get the rope-maker’s sister into bed, and she wouldn’t by any means be the first girl…
Yes, he said. Calm down. Have a seat. Let’s start at the beginning.
This was the kind of client he was beginning to get. An ordinary man – or frequently a woman – who’d fallen foul of vested interests. Naturally, there was no hope of a fee.
The rope-maker’s tale sounded too bad to be true. Nevertheless, he said, we’ll let it see the light. Within a month, Dom Brognard was under investigation, and the rope-maker was sueing the abbey for damages. When the Benedictines wanted to retain a lawyer, who did they get? M. Liborel, his one-time sponsor. He said, gratitude does not bind me here, the truth is at stake.
Little hollow words, echoing through
