Hilary Mantel - A Place of Greater Safety

A hawker, selling cures for toothache, collected a crowd that talked back to him. ‘Liar!’ a woman screamed. ‘Get them pulled out, that’s the only way.’ Before he walked away, he saw her wild, mad, urban eyes.

MAÎTRE VINOT was a rotund man, plump-pawed and pugnacious. He affected to be boisterous, like an elderly schoolboy.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘we can but give you a try. We … can … but … give … you … a try.’

I can give it a try, Georges-Jacques thought.

‘One thing’s for sure, your handwriting is atrocious. What do they teach you nowadays? I hope your Latin’s up to scratch.’

‘Maître Vinot,’ Danton said, ‘I’ve clerked for two years, do you think I’ve come here to copy letters?’

Maître Vinot stared at him.

‘My Latin’s fine,’ he said. ‘My Greek’s fine, too. I also speak English fluently, and enough Italian to get by. If that interests you.’

‘Where did you learn?’

‘I taught myself.’

‘How extremely enterprising. Mind you, if we have any trouble with foreigners we get an interpreter in.’ He looked Danton over. ‘Like to travel, would you?’

‘Yes, I would, if I got the chance. I’d like to go to England.’

‘Admire the English, do you? Admire their institutions?’

‘A parliament’s what we need, don’t you think? I mean a properly representative one, not ruined by corruption like theirs. Oh, and a separation of the legislative and executive arms. They fall down there.’

‘Now listen to me,’ Maître Vinot said. ‘I shall say to you one word about all this, and I hope I shall not need to repeat it. I won’t interfere with your opinions – though I suppose you think they’re unique? Why,’ he said, spluttering slightly, ‘they’re the commonest thing, my coachman has those opinions. I don’t run around after my clerks inquiring after their morals and shepherding them off to Mass; but this city is no safe place. There are all kinds of books circulating without the censor’s stamp, and in some of the coffee houses – the smart ones, too – the gossip is near to treasonable. I don’t ask you to do the impossible, I don’t ask you to keep your mind off all that – but I do ask you to take care who you mix with. I won’t have sedition – not on my premises. Don’t ever consider that you speak in private, or in confidence, because for all you know somebody may be drawing you on, ready to report you to the authorities. Oh yes,’ he said, nodding to show that he had the measure of a doughty opponent: ‘oh yes, you learn a thing or two in our trade. Young men will have to learn to watch their tongues.’

‘Very well, Maître Vinot,’ Georges-Jacques said meekly.

A man put his head around the door. ‘Maître Perrin was asking,’ he said, ‘are you taking on Jean-Nicolas’s son, or what?’

‘Oh God,’ Maître Vinot groaned, ‘have you seen Jean-Nicolas’s son? I mean, have you had the pleasure of conversation with him?’

‘No,’ the man said, ‘I just thought, old friend’s boy, you know. They say he’s very bright, too.’

‘Do they? That’s not all they say. No, I’m taking on this cool customer here, this young fellow from Troyes. He reveals himself to be a loud-mouthed seditionary already, but what is that compared to the perils of a working day with the young Desmoulins?’

‘Not to worry. Perrin wants him anyway.’

‘That I can readily imagine. Didn’t Jean-Nicolas ever hear the gossip? No, he was always obtuse. That’s not my problem, let Perrin get on with it. Live and let live, I always say,’ Maître Vinot told Danton. ‘Maître Perrin’s an old colleague of mine, very sound on revenue law – they say he’s a sodomite, but is that my business?’

‘A private vice,’ Danton said.

‘Just so.’ He looked up at Danton. ‘Made my points, have I?’

‘Yes, Maître Vinot, I should say you’ve driven them well into my skull.’

‘Good. Now look, there’s no point in having you in the office if no one can read your handwriting, so you’d better start from the other end of the business – “cover the courts”, as we say. You’ll do a daily check on each case in which the office has an interest – you’ll get around that way, King’s Bench, Chancery division, Châtelet. Interested in ecclesiastical work? We don’t handle it, but we’ll farm you out to someone who does. My advice to you,’ he paused, ‘don’t be in too much of a hurry. Build slowly; anybody who works steadily can have a modest success, steadiness is all it takes. You need the right contacts, of course, and that’s what my office will give you. Try to work out for yourself a Life Plan. There’s plenty of work in your part of the country. Five years from now, you’ll be nicely on your way.’

‘I’d like to make a career in Paris.’

Maître Vinot smiled. ‘That’s what all the young men say. Oh well, get yourself out tomorrow, and have a look at it.’

They shook hands, rather formally, like Englishmen after all. Georges-Jacques clattered downstairs and out into the street. He kept thinking about Françoise-Julie. Every few minutes she flitted into his head. He had her address, the rue de la Tixanderie, wherever that was. Third floor, she’d said, it’s not grand but it’s mine. He wondered if she’d go to bed with him. It seemed quite likely. Presumably things that were impossible in Troyes were perfectly possible here.

ALL DAY, and far into the night, traffic rumbled through narrow and insufficient streets. Carriages flattened him against walls. The escutcheons and achievements of their owners glowed in coarse heraldic tints; velvet-nosed horses set their feet daintily into the city filth. Inside, their owners leaned back with distant eyes. On the bridges and at the intersections coaches and drays and vegetable carts jostled and locked their wheels. Footmen in livery hung from the backs of carriages to exchange insults with coalmen and out-of-town bakers. The problems raised by accidents were solved rapidly, in cash, according to the accepted tariff for arms, legs and fatalities, and under the indifferent eyes of the police.

On the Pont-Neuf the public letter-writers had their booths, and traders set out their goods on the ground and on ramshackle stalls. He sorted through some baskets of books, secondhand: a sentimental romance, some Ariosto, a crisp and unread book published in Edinburgh, The Chains of Slavery by Jean-Paul Marat. He bought half a dozen for two sous each. Dogs ran in packs, scavenging around the market.

Every second person he met, it seemed, was a builder’s labourer, covered in plaster dust. The city was tearing itself up by the roots. In some districts they were levelling whole streets and starting again. Small crowds gathered to watch the more tricky and spectacular operations. The labourers were seasonal workers, and poor. There was a bonus if they finished ahead of schedule, and so they worked at a dangerous pace, the air heavy with their curses and the sweat rolling down their scrawny backs. What would Maître Vinot say? ‘Build slowly.’

There was a busker, a man with a strained, once-powerful baritone. He had a hideously destroyed face, one empty eye-socket overgrown with livid scar tissue. He had a placard that read HERO OF THE AMERICAN LIBERATION. He sang songs about the court; they described the Queen indulging in vices which no one had discovered in Arcis-sur-Aube. In the Luxembourg Gardens a beautiful blonde woman looked him up and down and dismissed him from her mind.

He went to Saint-Antoine. He stood below the Bastille, looked up at its eight towers. He had expected walls like sea-cliffs. The highest must be – what? Seventy-five, eighty feet?

‘The walls are eight feet thick, you know,’ a passer-by said to him.