“She says that any priest who’s pledged his first allegiance to the Constitution is no priest at all.”
“I’ll hear that from her own lips,” Sant’Angelo said, as the massive gong in the clock tower rang out. “Or would you rather explain to the prosecutor why the widow was late to her appointment on the scaffold?” He made as if to leave in a huff, when the sentries grudgingly let him pass.
Holding up the bottom of his black robe, he ascended the winding steps three at a time, waving the letter at two more guards, who were presently occupied with wrestling a condemned husband away from his sobbing wife, then up to another barred door. Here again he showed the letter, but once he determined that the jailer could not read, he quickly produced his purse and poured a cascade of coins into the man’s weather-beaten hand.
Going ever higher, he passed several cell doors, where other prisoners of consequence were being kept. In the Conciergerie, there had always been varying levels of discomfort. For the wealthy and privileged, willing to fork over the necessary bribes, there were private cells with a bed, a desk, and even writing materials. For the less-well-to-do, there were pistoles, with a bunk and a table. And for the commoners—known as the pailleux—there were the rocky, underground caverns kept damp by the Seine, where matted hay, or paille, was strewn on the floor. In previous times, the prisoners there were simply left to die from malnutrition, or the infectious diseases that lingered in the gloomy vaults.
The queen, Sant’Angelo knew, was housed at the top of the tower, not out of any pity or concern but because it afforded the greatest security. There was only one staircase up, and at the door to her cell, another pair of gendarmes was waiting. The marquis slowed his step and approached with his breviary in hand.
“I am here for the prisoner to make her final communion.”
“I don’t know anything about that claptrap,” one of them snapped. “You’ll have to see Citizen Hébert; he’s inside.”
The marquis had not counted on this. Of all the bloodthirsty wolves of the Revolution, Jacques Hébert was the worst. Chief of the Committee of Public Safety, it was he who had published some of the most defamatory and revolting lies about the queen, and it was he who had declared, in his role as the champion of the sansculottes, “I have promised them the head of Antoinette! I will go and cut it off myself if there is any delay in giving it to me.”
Apparently, he had decided to monitor the execution himself.
The marquis ducked his head to enter the cell (Hébert had had the doorway purposely lowered, so that the queen, whenever she came out to receive a visitor from the Convention, would have to bow her head to him), and found the chief and a couple of his minions from the Committee keeping vigil in the anteroom.
“Who are you?” Hébert demanded, wheeling on him. He was armed, as usual, with a tasseled rapier hanging at his side.
The marquis produced the letter and waited as Hébert read it. His eyes were close-set and red-rimmed, like a rodent’s, and his jaw was constantly grinding. His dark hair, wet with perspiration, was tied back with the tricolor cockade.
“I’ve never seen you before,” Hébert said suspiciously. “Which one of those corrupt orders do you belong to?”
“I follow St. Francis.”
“And what makes you think the Capet woman will want to talk to you?”
“I don’t know that she will,” the marquis replied, affecting indifference. “But this privilege is still established by law.”
He knew that the mention of the law was a cunning stroke; these assassins liked to pretend that they were only upholding justice—equal for everyone in the new Republic—and that their bloody acts were simply the seamless working of the state’s machinery. Even the guillotine, now the dreaded symbol of the Revolution itself, had been invented as a swifter and more humane method of execution; in fact, however, it had become an indispensable means for conducting murder on an unprecedented scale.
Monsieur Hébert tossed the letter back at Sant’Angelo, and taking an iron key from his own pocket, unlocked the inner door.
“Be quick about it. She’s had thirty-seven years to make her peace with God. I don’t know how she can catch up now.”
One of his minions laughed, and Hébert, too, seemed to enjoy his little jest. The marquis swallowed the anger that rose in his throat like a ball of boiling tar and went inside.
The room was nearly bare, with just a few sticks of battered furniture and a rumpled sheet strung on a line to conceal the privy bucket. With the window blocked, and the sun in another quarter, the tiny cell was as dim as it was chill.