Читать книгу The Red Mass - Valentine Williams - Страница 11

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Rocking and swaying over the rough cobbles the Calais diligence threaded its way through the seething Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Paris stewed breathless in the sultry air of the hot May evening. On every floor of the tall old houses windows were garnished with citizens and citizenesses in various stages of undress. At the house doors, on chairs set beneath the frowning black carriageways or thrust forward on the narrow sidewalk, the concierges, male and female, lolled and gossiped with their neighbours or watched the busy life of the street. The heat was oppressive, and from the reeking heart of the city nameless odours of pollution and decay rose in one vast and nauseating blend to the bronze-tinted sky. All Paris was limp and extenuated, gasping for the cooling breeze that sundown, in this torrid summer of the Year Two of the Republic, so persistently denied.

When the coach neared the Tuileries its progress grew slower as, with every turning, it became more deeply involved in the stream of traffic that, night and day, surged about the approaches to the Convention. The rue Saint-Honoré was packed. Carriages and market-carts, mounted men and foot-passengers, hawkers and idlers, moved slowly forward in an almost impenetrable phalanx. From his lofty perch the coachman of the mail rained down warnings and oaths upon the jostling crowds that so reluctantly divided to make passage for the diligence as it lumbered its way towards the Messageries, its weary, road-stained horses slipping on the broken and neglected roadway, their hoofs striking forth showers of sparks from the uneven stones.

'Attention, tonnerre de Dieu!'—'Gare à vous, les citoyens!'—'Hé, là-bas, la citoyenne!' thundered the driver, and, loud as a pistol-shot, his whip cracked about the heads of his steaming horses. Imprecations, abuse, and chaff were flung back at him from the shabby, evil-smelling mob that swarmed, wheel-high, about the Calais Mail.

Suddenly, out of the press ahead, the roll of drums resounded. A murmur of excitement ran through the crowd. The shouting and laughter ebbed and died. An odd hush fell upon the mob swaying to and fro around the coach, as the driver, with wrists of steel, checked the straining horses and drew up at the kerb.

The muffled note of the drums drew nearer. Above the heads of the billowing multitude two carts were now visible such as farmers use for carting grass or hay, with high wheels and a sort of low palisade above the axle. Each was filled with standing figures that staggered and lurched to every movement of the vehicle. Before went two drummers in dirty blue uniforms, striped cotton trousers that flapped at the knee, and stained and ragged stockings falling in wrinkles about coarse black shoes, big tenor drums slung from a leathern strap that crossed their chests. Behind them the evening sun glinted on a line of drawn sabres that rose and fell on either side of the carts.

The driver of the mail, having brought his horses to a halt, slackened the reins, dropped his tall whip into its slot, and dexterously blew his nose on his fingers.

'The evening batch!' he said to the young man on the box-seat by his side.

From the windows of the diligence now the inside passengers were craning their necks, and on the roof the occupants of the rear seats were standing up. The young man beside the driver looked about him curiously. He was a well-built, handsome young fellow with a proud and rather arrogant air, clean-shaven, his dark hair (which, according to the custom of revolutionary France, he wore without powder) gathered up loosely under the broad brim of his hat and tied with a black riband behind. The dust of the road lay thick on his plain grey travelling-suit and even powdered his cheeks and eyebrows.

The crowd remained very quiet in an attitude of mournful indifference. As it heaved forward and back, its feet rustled in the silence like the dance of leaves in a churchyard. Now the carts turned to pass down a side-turning, and the dull rumble of wheels joined itself to the echoing rattle of the drumsticks. On the shafts of each cart the driver sat, ragged, ill-featured fellows with matted hair and feet thrust into sabots dangling listlessly. An escort of mounted men brought up the rear.

They were a wan and dejected company, the occupants of the carts. Men and women, they numbered about a dozen in all. Their heads were bare. At the throat the upper part of their garments had been shorn away so that neck and throat were exposed, showing a deep expanse of skin which, like their faces, was yellowed with the sickly hue of long confinement. Dirty ropes, deeply stained with blood, were tightly wound about their wrists, giving them a helpless air that accentuated the look of mute despair graven in their hollow eyes.

There was little means of distinguishing their station in life, for almost all, like the crowd that silently regarded them, appeared to be dirty and shabby. A perpetual murmur went up from the carts, a jumble of incoherent, high-pitched chatter like the babble of a fever ward. A fat, gross woman in bedraggled finery, her face grey beneath its coat of paint, her coarse, dyed hair shorn close away from the nape of her swelling throat, screamed repeatedly, 'Jésu! Jésu!' while a middle-aged man with congested features, leaning over the side of the cart, seemed to be addressing the mob—the drums drowned his voice—in a flood of never-ceasing oratory. There was a young girl who, looking like a boy with her clipped locks, was quietly sobbing: there were two ragged men, their hairy torsos protruding from their torn and filthy shirts, who laughed and shouted badinage at one another; and there was a grey-beard, quite oblivious of his surroundings, whose lips moved silently.

In all this company of spectres there was only one whose bearing revealed complete indifference to the goal of that sad journey. He was in the second cart, a big man, with a vast chest and a leonine head covered with auburn ringlets. Of all the company he was the only one that was respectably attired. Of all those pale prisoners he alone had the clear skin and the fresh tint of health.

He had a bold, calm eye, the eye of a leader of men, and as he lolled nonchalantly against the back of the cart he let his haughty gaze rove out across the crowd. For a moment it met the compassionate and earnest regard of the young man on the box-seat of the Calais Mail. It stirred him strangely, and, in the one brief instant in which their glances met, to him, the stranger in this forbidden, blood-drenched city, it was like a handclasp of amity.

The next moment the cart had turned the corner and the mournful wailing procession had passed on. The crowd stirred into life again, the mail-driver shook up his horses, and the diligence resumed its rocking progress towards the rue des Victoires.

Arrived at his destination, the young man, after giving the driver a greasy assignat from a bundle he produced from his pocketbook, descended to the ground and waited composedly for the guard to get his valise from the boot.

The yard of the Messageries was densely crowded. There were people who had come to meet relations or friends, a knot of important-looking men with enormous cockades in their hats who respectfully greeted the pompous official that, girt about with a tricolour sash, had joined the mail at Abbéville, shabby clerks that fussed prodigiously about the way-bill, hawkers who ran in and out of the assembly with newspapers and broadsheets shouting, 'Voyez le dernier discours du Citoyen Couthon à la Convention!' or, 'Demandez "La Conjuration de l'Assassin Pitt"!' and pedlars with cakes and fruit, lemonade-sellers, porters, touts, and gendarmes. And all this swarming, shouting, gesticulating, pushing multitude was cockaded, the men with the red-white-and-blue of the Commune flaunting on their hats or red caps, the women with enormous rosettes worn in their hair or planted between their breasts.

It was a squalid, ill-mannered, evil-smelling horde, and the young man, as he waited for his valise, let his thoughts slide back regretfully to Piccadilly, as he had left it three days before, with the rich shops, the splendid horses, the well-dressed citizens waving to the spick-and-span coach as it turned out of the yard of the White Horse Cellar and bowled along the even, well-metalled roadway.

Only three days ago! How far away already seemed that momentous interview in the great dim room in Downing Street and the long talk that followed it in Mr. Gray's snug quarters at the Treasury! That night, in the Minister's study, he had been dimly conscious of the presence of a hidden force that imposed its will on his. It seemed to him that some influence, recking nothing of convention, had taken charge of his life. It had brushed aside the Draconic code of his order and placed, for the first time, the responsibility for his acts on himself instead of on others.

He was a defaulter, but he was free. He had flown in the face of society, but his flight had borne him aloft above the cramped confines of his sheltered life. He was master of his actions now in a hand-to-hand struggle with fate.

He exulted in his sense of new-found liberty. He regretted nothing. Now and again, especially when, from the top of the Deal coach, he had seen dawn redden the sky, he had had a disturbing vision of Maxeter anxiously consulting his watch as he paced the dew-soaked grass of Hyde Park and of the growing look of raillery in the faces of the Vicomte and his friends. He had fled an engagement of honour, and by this time, he reflected, his name was anathema in the clubs. But so it had to be. Mr. Gray would suffer no explanation, no compromise, for so the service of Mr. Pitt demanded. It was Hector Fotheringay's first lesson.

At length his valise was deposited at his feet. He handed it over to a porter and bade him bear it to the Hôtel des États Unis in the rue Favart, a quiet and inconspicuous house, where, since a week or more, a room, he knew, had been reserved for the young French timber-merchant from Copenhagen. The hostess, a buxom and black-eyed woman with a kindly expression, looked at him sharply as she handed him the key.

'Number 23, the second floor,' she said. 'Take the citizen's valise up, my friend,' she added to the porter, and privately motioned to the young man to stay behind.

'You are a stranger in Paris, I think, citoyen,' she said to Hector, when the porter had mounted the winding stair. 'You will do well to don a cockade before you go out in the street again, especially as you must proceed at once to the section of the Quartier to report your arrival. In the departments one is less exacting, but here in Paris ...'

As she was speaking, she rummaged in a drawer.

'Give me your hat,' she said.

She produced a large tricolour cockade, and with a pin which she took from her ample bosom fastened it across the buckle that adorned the front of the young man's hat.

'Et voilà!' she exclaimed. 'You will give the porte-faix a few sols more, mon petit, and he will guide you at once to the Section Lepeletier—it is but two paces from here. One cannot be too prompt in putting one's papers in order!'

And so, in the wake of the porter, who wore in his buttonhole a little plaque inscribed, beneath crossed fasces, 'La Patrie ou la Mort,' Hector Fotheringay, Lieutenant and Captain of His Majesty's Third Foot Guards, went forth adorned with the emblem of regicide France.

A long queue of people extended along the pavement of the rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas, where, in the disestablished convent of that name, the headquarters of the Lepeletier Section was installed. A red bonnet set on a pike, fastened to the gate above a decapitated statue of the Blessed Virgin, marked the entrance.

Hector followed the porter to the head of the queue. These endless queues seemed to be universal in Paris, he had noticed on his drive through the city. Every butcher's, every baker's shop had its patient file of customers.

'Give the citizen something for himself and he will take you in!' whispered the porter as he beckoned to a man in a red cap who leant on a pike under the archway. To Red Cap he said:

'The citizen lodges chez the Citizeness Dupin. He comes for his certificat de civisme.'

Hector had his assignat ready and slipped it into Red Cap's greasy palm. Then he paid off the porter, who insisted on shaking hands, and accompanied Red Cap into the house. An angry murmur rose from the crowd; but of this Red Cap took no notice.

He brought Hector into a spacious room with a groined roof, a long table set at the far end, at which, in the midst of a prodigious confusion of papers, a humpback was writing furiously. He wore an immense cocked hat pushed back from his low forehead, and on the table in front of him was a long cavalry sabre and a brace of pistols. Above his head, crowned with a wreath of laurel, was a bust of Marat, 'L'Ami du Peuple.' The room smelt abominably close, though many of the leaded panes of the windows were broken. The floor was indescribably filthy. Some soldiers squatted on a heap of straw in the corner. One of them, naked to the waist, was anxiously examining his shirt inch by inch.

A young man with a rakish air and brown hair falling about his shoulders detached himself from a knot of men lounging behind the table as Red Cap and his companion approached. He exchanged a few words in whispers with Hector's escort. Then he extended his hand.

'Your papers, citizen,' he said to Hector.

Hector handed over his passport and certificate of employment. The young man glanced at them and dumped them down on the top of a pile of correspondence at the humpback's elbow. Then he returned to Red Cap.

'To go back to what I was telling you this morning, Petitpierre,' he said. 'Yourself and the Citizeness Petitpierre can have the loge at the Théâtre Feydeau any evening you wish. The new piece is very good, formidable!—it deals with the patriotic career of the Citoyen Robespierre! Every night the parterre rises and acclaims the actors!'

'Bien sûr, we'd like to go, friend Maurice,' replied Petitpierre. 'If so be as to-morrow evening ...'

'C'est fait, c'est fait!' exclaimed the other. 'You shall have the seats in the morning, my friend. And if, when next you visit your brother at Mélun, you could manage to bring me back a little butter ...'

Petitpierre clapped him on the back.

'A patriot never fails his friends,' he said jovially. 'A pound of the finest for the Citizen Maurice: I shan't forget ...'

'Charpentier, Jean-François,' said a high-pitched voice from the table.

'Allez, allez,' remarked Maurice, and plucked Hector by the sleeve. 'The Citizen Commissary Grand-Duc is waiting!'

The young man advanced to the table. He saw a pale face, unshaven for days, with matted hair that fell about a narrow, sloping forehead.

'You are the Citizen Charpentier?' said Grand-Duc.

Hector bowed.

'Yes,' he replied.

'Say "Citizen Commissary" when you address me!' the humpback commanded.

Hector felt his colour mount in his cheeks.

'Yes, Citizen Commissary!' he said meekly.

'Born at Saint-Lunaire, in the Department of Île-et-Vilaine, according to the old calendar, the 20th September, 1767. Profession, Merchant. Employed by the firm of Hendrik and Christensen, timber-merchants, of Copenhagen?'

'Yes, Citizen Commissary!'

The humpback handed him two square cards.

'Fill up these! You are fortunate, citizen. The President of the Section is in his room beyond and can sign your certificate immediately!'

Hector took the pen the Commissary proffered and began to fill in the particulars. It was his first contact with the Revolution as a living force. He thought he had seldom seen a more sinister-looking individual than this pigeon-chested manikin who eyed him with such singular pertinacity. His hands shook so much that he could scarcely write.

At last it was done. Grand-Duc took the cards and, after glancing at them, struck a bell at his side. Darkness was falling without and a man appeared with a lamp which he put down on the table. To him the Commissary gave the cards and a pile of documents. The man bore them away in silence while the Commissary stretched himself and laid his horny hands upon the table before him. Sideways he looked at Hector.

'You come to offer your services to the Republic, Citizen Charpentier?' he said.

'As every good patriot should, Citizen Commissary!'

'You come late!'

'The English blockade is hard to evade, Citizen Commissary!'

'I do not reflect upon the patriotism of the citizen. I mean you were expected before this!'

Hector's heart turned to ice within him. The humpback's eyes, somnolent, yellow eyes, were fixed upon his. Always he was watching him. There was an indescribable air of suspicious inquisitiveness about this misshapen creature that filled the young man's mind with the deepest misgiving. What did his words mean? Was it a trap?

His hands were cold as ice as he replied as boldly as he could:

'For a week my ship was delayed by contrary winds in the Downs before the English coast whilst I lay hidden in the hold. I made all speed I could, Citizen Commissary!'

The messenger reappeared with one of the cards, Hector's passport and his other papers. The humpback handed them to the young man.

'Wear the card in your hat, young man, that all patriots may know you are an honest man. Au revoir! Lose no time in paying your respects to our mutual friend!'

With a soft chuckle he gave Hector his hand and plunged once more among his papers.