Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
“Pardon me, citizens,” the man claiming to be Marguerite’s lawyer said, stopping at a door a short distance from the court room’s entrance. Three men arguing over a document swerved to avoid her and Andre de Saint-Just, and the two guards escorting them before continuing down the hall.
Saint-Just tapped several errant papers sticking out of his reassembled folder back into place. “I need to consult with my client.”
The two guards, one a stocky man with a flattened nose, the other a tall man with impressively large ears, glanced uncertainly at each other. They had found deciding whether they ought to stand guard or help the lawyer with his spilled papers a challenging decision.
“We’ll follow you in,” Flat Nose said.
“I need to consult with my client in private,” de Saint-Just amended, rapping the folder against his hand for emphasis. “Even an alleged enemy of the state has a right to representation.”
Flat Nose looked unconvinced.
“Come now, citizens,” her lawyer smiled. “Where’s the harm in it? You don’t think she’ll try to escape, do you? With you standing guard out here.” He waved the folder to indicate the wide hallway filled with lawyers and their clients bustling past.
Then he cracked open the door, revealing a small room with a table and four ladder-back chairs.
Gesturing with the folder at the room’s single barred window, he added, “And that her only means of escape? The citizeness is slender, I’ll grant you.
But not slender enough to slip through those bars.
Not to mention, it would be quite the fall to the pavement below, even if she could.
Do you really think she’s planning to jump?
” He turned and addressed her, “You aren’t planning to jump, are you, Citizeness Rouvroy? ”
“It hadn’t crossed my mind,” she replied without thinking. Indeed, her mind was rather overfull, what with the exposure of her drawing of Marat, the revelation that her neighbor had stolen her sketchbook and given it to the authorities—Why, Victorine? Why?
Not to mention the appearance of this human vortex who had whispered into her ear. “Trust me. We’re here to help.”
We? Who was “we”? Who was he?
“There. You see. Citizeness Rouvroy is not trying to escape the judgment of the people.”
She’d like to, though. More than anything.
“We simply need a moment alone to discuss her defense.”
“It’s not as if it will do any harm,” Big Ears said cautiously to Flat Nose.
“Or make any difference,” Flat Nose agreed. He pulled a pipe, a flint, and a twist of tobacco from his pocket. “But I could use a smoke.” He gestured with his pipe towards the open door. “Citizen, citizeness, you’ve got until I finish.”
Marguerite walked over to the nearest chair, fingers closing around the rough wooden slats of the back as the door clicked shut behind them.
She closed her eyes, and inhaled as deeply as her stays would allow, trying to steady herself.
The guards were right; there was little even the most talented lawyer could do for her now.
But she was in no rush to return to her cell.
She straightened, opened her eyes, preparing to tell Saint-Just precisely that, but the words caught in her throat. There was a man standing to the right of the doorframe. He must have been concealed by the door when Saint-Just opened it so the guards could inspect the room.
It was the man who had been sketching her. Documenting her despair. His hair had come untied from its queue. Dark wings framed the slash of eyebrows, the high cheek bones, the aristocratic nose, and the severe line of his mouth.
“Who are you?” she gasped, with a directness that would have horrified the nuns and governesses who had beaten etiquette into her.
Following the direction of her gaze, Saint-Just glanced over his shoulder. “Him? That’s Marcus. He’s in charge of this rescue.”
“You were drawing me. Why were you drawing me?”
“You drew Marat as a fish.”
She blinked at the outrage in his tone. “No one was ever supposed to see it. I was bored. It was a joke.”
“A joke that has made things a damn sight more complicated.”
“Complicated?” She blinked again. She was drowning in a sea of unreality.
“Do pardon me, citizen, for being so very thoughtless. I am deeply sorry the drawing from my sketchbook that was stolen by my neighbor and turned over to the Committee for Public Safety has caused you trouble. I do hope that the likelihood that I will be sent to the guillotine…” She faltered, feeling as if saying the thing aloud somehow would make it more real, then swallowed, and continued.
“I pray that it will not inconvenience you overmuch...”
“It will not.” He stepped forward, eyes fixed on her. His presence seemed to fill the tiny room with a vibrant energy, and for a moment she hesitated, uncertain whether to back away from him or to step closer.
“Because it will not happen,” he said, his voice low and sure.
Marguerite shook her head. This man, Marcus? He sounded so certain, she could almost believe him. She wanted to believe him. But it would be like clutching at smoke.
She looked up at him. “And how are you going to stop them from executing me? By drawing an escape tunnel? A balloon?”
“Balloon?” A corner of his serious lips tugged upwards. “That would be David’s forté. I’m a bit more practical…”
“David? Who is David?” She glanced around. There were only the two of them: Marcus and Saint-Just. “Who are you? Not your names. Who sent you?”
“We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot.” Andre de Saint-Just stepped between them.
“Saint-Just,” she narrowed her eyes at the curly-haired man, “are you related to Citizen Robespierre’s friend, Louis de Saint-Just?”
“I told you it was a terrible idea.” Marcus scowled at her would-be-lawyer.
“Alas, Marcus is better with action than words.” Saint-Just said, ignoring both Marcus’s remark and her question. “What he is endeavoring to say is that we’re part of a team that has come to rescue you.”
“Rescue me? A team? Of what? Artists and lawyers?” Marguerite made no effort to hide her disbelief.
“You saw what happened in that courtroom. There’s nothing you can say.
” She nodded at Saint-Just. “Or you can draw.” She shot a glance at Marcus.
“That will convince those people that I am not an enemy of the state.” That will save me.
“Forget the courtroom,” Marcus began.
“Forget the courtroom?” She repeated. The room where they’d held up her drawing of Marat? Where the people in the gallery had screamed for her death?
“Extemporaneous speech, as you’ve no doubt noticed, isn’t one of Marcus’s finer skills,” Saint-Just interjected, this time ignoring what sounded very much like a growl from the man.
“But when it comes to extemporaneous action, I assure you there’s none better.
He—we, have a great deal of other, far more useful skills.
Trust me, trust us, when I say, we will get you out of here. ”
“Trust?” As in the carriage after her arrest, Marguerite felt the tickle of hysterical laughter bubbling up in her chest. “I trusted my neighbor, Victorine, and look where that got me. I’ve known her for years.
I’ve never even seen either of you before…
” she hesitated. Did seeing Marcus in her dreams count?
“Your father sent us.” Marcus interrupted.
The bubbles in her chest turned into ice chips. Her father?
The dark-haired man reached into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a small cloth-wrapped package.
Unfolding the cloth, he held out an oval miniature framed in gold and enamel.
She recognized the frame and the portrait.
She could remember sitting for it, the stiff folds of her dress, her governess and the artist telling her to sit up straight, to stop fidgeting.
“Where did you get that?” The last time she’d seen it, it had been on her father’s massive desk beside a blue and white Sevres inkwell and a bowl full of keys.
She’d heard nothing from her father since she’d turned down his offer to flee with him.
In the ensuing months, she’d suppressed any thought of him.
Because when she didn’t, she imagined the worst.
As she was doing now. “Did you steal it?”
“He gave it to me.”
“Willingly?” Her stomach twisted at the thought of the other ways they might have obtained it.
“Indeed, he insisted I take it.”
Alarm bells were clanging so loudly in her head she could barely think. Why? Of all the influential people imprisoned in the Conciergerie in need of rescue, why were these strangers offering to help her?
Marguerite repeated the answer she’d given to anyone who asked about her father, to the arresting officers, the registrar in the prison, to overly curious cellmates. The lines she’d said only moments ago to the justices. “I don’t know where my father is. I haven’t seen him in over two years…”
“We have.” Marcus said, slipping the miniature back into his waistcoat. He reached into another pocket and pulled out the sketchbook she’d seen him holding in the courtroom. Opening it wide in a gesture that reminded her of the antenna-browed justice with her sketchbook.
Repressing a shudder, she leaned forward. Caught a distracting scent of sunshine, leather, and chalk.
Not a fish.
A drawing of an elderly man dressed in the shabby clothes of a servant, standing with outstretched arms as if pleading with the young couple seated before him.
Over his right shoulder, in the distance, was the sea and a tiny ship at anchor, sails furled.
Marguerite leaned forward to get a better look at the man’s face.
It was gaunt and tired, the hair curling around it wild, but still she recognized him. Her father.
“How?” Her breath was coming in shallow gasps. “Where? Is…he…” She couldn’t bear to ask alive? landing instead on, “Well?”
“He is.” Marcus nodded in the direction of the door, a reminder that it was being guarded by the pipe-smoking guards. “But there’s no time to explain how. We need information…”
“Information?” Her mouth went dry. Was this some sort of trap?
“Information from you to develop a plan of escape,” he said as if reading her mind. “Where are you being held?”
If they were from the Committee for Public Safety, they would already have this information.
“They brought me here, to the cells in the Conciergerie three days ago.” She struggled to keep her voice level, even as her brain conjured up the filth, the fetid air, the hysterical miasma of people days or hours from death.
“We need to get inside to get a better idea of the layout of the prison and your cell, the number and schedules of the guards. Possible escape routes,” he said. The intensity in his dark eyes, the cool assurance in his voice calmed her. She took a deep breath.
“Andre will have access to you as your lawyer. Tell the warden and the guards you need more time to consult with him, that you want him to visit you in your cell. And also tell them you’ve arranged to have a miniature painted by Marcus Tisset.”
“Marcus Tisset?” It wasn’t an artist’s name she recognized. “Is that your name?”
“It’s the one you should use. We’ll need as much time as you can get us to map out and identify the prison’s vulnerabilities and get certain items to you.”
“No one’s ever escaped from the Conciergerie…”
He smiled, the curve of his severe lips like a sliver of silver moon piercing the clouds. Like a glimmer of hope. “No one’s ever escaped…yet.”