Authors: Matthew Plampin
Raoul Rigault was passing on the rue des Acacias – a stocky, full-bearded man of twenty-five in a discoloured black suit, loudly promising the crowds all manner of unlikely things. Rigault was a radical agitator from Montparnasse, a political ally of Jean-Jacques’s, renowned both for his dedication to their cause and his casual mistreatment of women. He always paid Hannah a little too much attention – standing too close when they spoke, holding onto her hand for a few seconds too long, touching his tongue against his upper lip as she answered his questions. Spotting her now he sidled over, flanked by a mixed gang of black suits and militia uniforms, and tried to snake an arm around her waist. She squirmed away with a curse, tearing off his kepi and casting it on the cobbles.
Rigault bent down to retrieve it. ‘Citizen Pardy,’ he grinned, slapping the cap into shape and fitting it over his shaggy, unwashed head, ‘are you ready for what needs to be done?’
Hannah had lost count of the number of times she’d been asked this. ‘I am, Rigault. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.’
The agitator regarded her with mock admiration. ‘If only the rest of Paris could partake of your bravery. Why, this very morning French soldiers fled from the enemy – Imperial Zoaves no less, flinging aside their rifles and running like chastened children. The curs should be bound to posts atop the enceinte, should they not, and made to weather the Prussian artillery.’ He turned to Clem, who was trying in vain to follow their conversation. ‘This must be your brother. I’d heard he was in the city. Quite the
rosbif
, isn’t he –
rosbif
to the damned bone!’ A bushy eyebrow arched. ‘Makes one wonder how you yourself must have been, before Paris sank her teeth into you.’
As Hannah was considering her response, a young woman shoved her way through Rigault’s gang and leaped onto Clem. They collided heavily with the window of the Géricault; she began to kiss him with an abandon that anywhere else would have been thought nakedly indecent, but here was met with claps and whistles. It was Laure Fleurot, dressed in an approximation of National Guard uniform: a kepi, double-breasted tunic and pantaloons, all in dark blue. One of Clem’s hands remained outstretched, the fingers slowly contracting, as if half hoping that someone would seize hold and drag him to safety.
Hannah’s guilt returned. She’d left Clem at Laure’s mercy and this was the result. She’d been quite wrong: of course her feckless brother had been unable to repel such a woman. The cocotte had worked her devices – bound Clem up in grubby silken cord. It felt deliberate, as if he’d been singled out. It felt suspicious.
There was a coldness between Hannah and Laure, growing slowly closer to open enmity. The origins of it were in that portrait, now more than two months old. Laure had come to the rue Garreau to sit, and it had gone well indeed. The cocotte had talked about her time in the ballet schools; how she’d been expelled after one of the masters had seduced her, forcing her to adapt both her style and her expectations to the dancing halls. There’d been no self-pity to this tale. Laure had seemed largely satisfied with her lot. Hannah had respected her resilience and enjoyed her coarse humour – only discovering after she’d gone that fifteen francs had been taken from her drawer, along with several pairs of stockings and an ivory comb. Laure had denied this theft vehemently when they’d met by accident in the Moulin de la Galette a few days later. There had been a brand new hat perched on her head, though, and paste diamonds glinting in her ears.
Hannah caught her breath: Laure Fleurot sent the letter that had summoned her family to Paris. It was obvious. The cocotte was certainly capable of such a step. Numerous morsels of Montmartre gossip attested to her malicious, unforgiving nature. She’d have hired someone to pen the letter itself, naturally; she no doubt pulled tricks like this all the time and would know the best people in the city for such work. The purpose would have been the mortal embarrassment of Hannah – the humbling of one who’d besmirched her name, albeit with complete justification. Upon Clem and Elizabeth’s appearance, Laure had plainly decided to seduce the brother to cement the scheme. What better way to ensure that a gauche English brother would be hanging around Montmartre throughout these critical days, making Hannah look ridiculous? Like most of her kind, the cocotte was also an out-and-out mercenary; she’d be watching for a chance to wring whatever she could from the Pardy family. While investigating Hannah’s past she’d have learned that Elizabeth had once been rich and famous, and had probably assumed that there’d be gold for the taking. In that, at least, she was in for a disappointment.
Hannah resolved to haul Laure off her brother and demand a confession. Before she could act, however, a company of drunken National Guard burst from the Géricault. They hailed Rigault with great enthusiasm, sweeping the agitator and his gang back into the main body of the march. Hannah was carried along with them; there were three bodies between her and Clem, then three dozen. She could see him still, just about – the kiss had finished, but he was utterly upended, protesting his innocence as the cocotte accused him of something, stabbing her forefinger against his chest.
Rigault was eyeing Laure approvingly. ‘Conquered,’ he declared, ‘by a warrior princess. By an angel in uniform.’
Hannah turned away, pulling her canvas jacket tightly around her and buttoning it to the neck. ‘Why
is
she in uniform? Are the National Guard taking women now?’
‘She’s a
vivandière
. They’re attached to Guard companies to supply food, wine, bandages … and various other services. Their recruitment is a priority, I understand. Someone of Mademoiselle Laure’s indisputable abilities was not about to go to waste.’
‘You know her well, then?’
Rigault chuckled. ‘Citizen, Laure Fleurot is a celebrated lady in Montparnasse – a celebrated lady indeed. Circumstances may have compelled her to move on, but the mere mention of her name is still enough to make grown men weep with longing.’ He looked around again. ‘I suppose it’s the turn of Montmartre now. Or rather your brother, the lucky dog.’
‘She’s using him,’ Hannah said.
The agitator straightened his necktie. ‘I was once used in that fashion,’ he confided. ‘It was
divine
.’
From the outset this march was different. The sky had clouded over, bleeding what light and colour was left from the lanes. Beneath the pounding of the marchers’ drums was the dull boom of cannon-fire; no longer confined to the south, it now came from every direction, gathering in both pace and volume. As Hannah left the Buttes Montmartre, moving onto broader, straighter streets, she saw teams of military engineers felling trees to widen the thoroughfares for the passage of heavy guns. She heard the rasp of long saws, along with shouts and sudden cracks; a shudder ran through a mature beech and it toppled over, its globe of golden leaves collapsing as it crashed into the mud.
The people were unbowed, but in place of their usual jubilation and patriotic fervour was an angry unrest. There was just one topic of conversation among them: the crushing defeat dealt to the French forces at Châtillon. Details of the action were sketchy. Hannah heard it said that the French regiments had fired on each other in their panic; that they’d bolted at the first peal of the Prussian artillery, as Raoul Rigault had claimed. All sorts of retributions were being promised, against Prussian and cowardly Frenchman alike.
Hannah had marched more times than she could recall; it was one of the experiences barely known to her before Jean-Jacques that was now among the better parts of her life. She found an intense joy in surrendering herself to the multitude, blurring into an entity that was huge and ancient and unstoppable. That afternoon, however, she was distracted, beset with fears for Clement. Her twin had become doubly ensnared. He was caught in besieged Paris, a city in which he really didn’t belong; and he was caught between the thighs of a deceitful cocotte who sought only to bend him to her wicked ends. She expected them to be at the front of the procession – Laure displaying her prize, inviting him to wave at his sister and show everyone what Hannah Pardy really was. They weren’t there, though; no one she asked had seen them. It was as if they’d been lost, left back on the Buttes. This would surely run against Laure’s plan. It defied understanding.
Jean-Jacques appeared through a screen of banners, about halfway down the rue des Martyrs. They’d missed their rendezvous in Montmartre; the crowds had simply been too dense, too determined in their progress down to the centre. He was in conference with some well-known radicals – ageing veterans of the 1848 uprising, peripatetic speakers from the provinces, the proprietors of red newspapers banned under Louis Napoleon – a ragtag group of extremists and eccentrics over whom he towered in every sense. Noticing Hannah, he made an excuse and came to walk alongside her. They met as comrades but stood very close, his arm brushing gently across her back. There was a new pin in his lapel, enamelled with the number 197 – a battalion number.
‘I have accepted a commission,’ he said. ‘I am a major in the National Guard.’
Hannah looked up at his face – at the scar carved so deeply into his jaw that it had nicked the bone beneath. She found herself imagining what fresh injuries might await him outside the city wall, but buried these thoughts immediately: she would not play the hysterical lover, screaming and begging and tearing at her hair. Jean-Jacques was a soldier and the battle for Paris had begun. He had to fight.
The march cut across the rue Lafayette, merging messily with another coming down from the north-east. They’d reached the boulevard des Italiens – the grandest part of town. The workers’ chants echoed off the massive buildings; their boots rumbled over acres of smooth asphalt. Off to their left was the premises of a picture dealer Hannah had petitioned for several months soon after her arrival in Paris, trying without success to get the man to take on a single small canvas. The once-sumptuous shop now had a barren aspect, its wide window iron-clad and blank. Across the door, in red letters a foot high, someone had daubed the old revolutionary slogan:
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
Jean-Jacques was up on a bench. ‘The Imperial army may have failed today,’ he proclaimed, ‘but the
people
have not failed. We will save this luxury and bourgeois wealth from the Prussians. We will save it, my friends, and then we will see it apportioned
fairly
, for the benefit of all!’ He pointed along the boulevard, in the direction of the place de la Concorde. ‘To the Strasbourg! City of my forefathers – a steadfast people, inspiring us with their resistance! Showing us what can be done – that these Prussians can be held back! To the Strasbourg!’
Those around echoed his call:
To the Strasbourg!
Their black-clad leader returned to the street, unruffled by his impromptu address; Hannah felt his hand rest briefly on her hip.
‘We should hurry,’ he said.
Ahead of them now, on the western corner of the place de l’Opéra, was the Paris Grand. The hotel looked deserted, a majestic hulk adrift among the crowds. They pushed on past the long row of plate-glass doors, already opaque with grime; and then a voice scythed through the shouts and the singing, calling Hannah’s name with commanding clarity. Elizabeth.
Hannah hadn’t been worried. She’d assumed that her mother would still be somewhere in the outer regions of the city, seeking adventure and noteworthy sights – that the chances of them seeing her were simply too remote to bother about. This had obviously been a mistake. A neat blue-grey hat was moving around a Morris column covered with tattered theatre bills; Elizabeth had been lying in wait outside her hotel and must have seen Jean-Jacques make his pronouncement from the bench. Behind her was a lean, bearded man, smartly dressed, wearing a jet topper and an aloof air. They closed in fast, preventing escape. Elizabeth kissed Hannah’s cheek and shook Jean-Jacques’s hand – appearing to note the feel of his artificial fingers as she did so.
‘Your scheme worked,’ Hannah said, scarcely keeping her temper in check. ‘You are here with us after all.’
Elizabeth gave her a cool smile before addressing Jean-Jacques. ‘Monsieur Allix, I must ask – are the workers marching against the Prussians today, or the men who have set themselves up in the Hôtel de Ville?’
To Hannah’s surprise, Jean-Jacques answered in serviceable English. ‘We wish to beat our enemy, Madame. We wish for revenge. It can be done.’
His accent was strange, a mix of Alsatian and American; Hannah guessed that he must have learned something of the language while fighting for the Union. Elizabeth tried to revert to French – which she clearly spoke better than he did English – but he insisted with a politeness that was faintly confrontational.
Hannah could only watch helplessly. The conversation that she’d managed to foil in the Danton was coming to pass. The two great figures of her life were meeting on a Paris pavement. They made for a peculiar pair. The authoress and lady traveller, polished and poised despite her poverty, seemed as always to have some other goal in mind, some hidden purpose; whereas the political visionary was being courteous but distinctly guarded, his hands crossed before him like a stone knight in a crypt. Hannah honestly couldn’t foresee how their exchange might unfold.
‘Our government, however,’ Jean-Jacques continued, ‘this provisional cabinet who have taken over from the emperor – they are not so determined.’
Elizabeth had assumed an absorbed expression, ignoring the jostling of passing workers. ‘Do you think they will attempt to make peace with the Prussians, Monsieur?’
‘They are rich men. Rich men never wish to fight. They care only for gold – for their business.’
This was said briskly, as if Elizabeth was a part of the problem he described, but she was nodding along in agreement. ‘What action will you take if the provisional government does move towards surrender?’
Jean-Jacques inclined his head, as if to say:
there would be consequences
. ‘“The goddess of revolt”,’ he recited, ‘“is the mother of all liberty.”’