A/N: Returning to this one after a break. I haven't abandoned The Sleep of Reason, I just need to work on some characterisations I'm not happy with (the remaining chapters are plotted and partly written). I've recently come back from a wonderful trip to Paris to commemorate the anniversary of the 1832 barricades, and during that time had the opportunity to not only research and pick up some excellent sources for this period that I'm still working my way through, but also the chance to speak with some extremely talented writers (some of whom publish here on FFnet) who have a passion for both the literature and history of the era. Having been immersed in French Romanticism and the revolutionary narrative, I came away with plenty of ideas. As always, it's just a matter of actually writing them!
Chapter 2 – A Worse Situation
John Macnamara: 'I am afraid, Colonel, we have got ourselves into a bad situation.'
Edward Despard: 'There are many better, and some worse.'
- Scaffold conversation, 1804
In the days after the insurrection, it was rumoured that the Seine had run red where the blood from its victims seeped from the Morgue into the river.
Had the blood purified those tainted waters when it mingled with them? Prouvaire would have thought so. Perhaps it merely made the already polluted waters murkier. And the cynics would have said that it did not matter - soon the river flowed on again, the blood a fleeting stain to be effaced just as quickly and permanently as the blood on the paving stones. But Combeferre's memories could not be removed so easily. Those events had changed the colour of his mind like blood through the water, only much more permanently.
In those hours, creeping through the deserted streets after escaping from the rue de la Chanvrerie, his desire had been to turn back, or to try to do something – anything – to rally Paris to their cause. What of those men who had vowed to join them? Workers, students…men of the National Guard, men of influence. What had happened to them? They had said they would continue the work of 1830 when the time came. They had sworn their oaths.
Until that moment when Enjolras had returned from his reconnaissance, they thought it had been in the balance. Years later, he had spoken to Dumas about it – Dumas, who on the night of the 5th June, still weak from his own bout with cholera, had tried to rally Lafitte and Lafayette to create a provisional government.
It had seemed so possible that summer to continue the work that had been cut short in 1830. With the unrest in Lyon, and the discontent over commitments Orleans had avoided in July 1830 to the specific demands of the Republicans for universal sufferage, freedom of the press and speech, the city had seemed a kindling pile, dried to the point of combustion by the withering epidemic, awaiting a spark.
"We have a chance," Enjolras had said. "The fundamental structure is unsound. When the door is rotten, if we attack it with explosive force we may kick it down." In summer 1830, it had seemed the door was rotten enough.
He had stood by Enjolras' side in 1830 on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, the gun he had been given by a National Guardsman who had joined their side in his hand, the day that Orleans had arrived to negotiate with Lafayette. He had seen the look in Enjolras' eyes, cool and appraising, as the two national figures had appeared on the balcony, wrapped in the tricolour. "Deeds, not words" Enjolras had muttered, and looked significantly at Combeferre.
They had all changed with 1830. The Revolution stolen from under them, all of them had come around to Enjolras' simple philosophy when faced with an obstacle that could not be circumvented – one attacked it with everything one had, and either smashed through it or smashed oneself to pieces against it.
And so the blood had seeped into the Seine.
Combeferre reviewed his papers in the fiacre on the way to Pontmercy's residence in the Marais – he did not keep his own carriage, remaining simple in his personal habits. He had ample opportunity to study his material during his slow, jolting progress along the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, although most of the points he had jotted down he knew by heart. Figures, eyewitness accounts, notes on the displacement of bodies.
There was so much information in the evidence compiled for inquiry into the rising – it told him everything and nothing.
The report from the morgue's medical examiner was not as detailed as one would expect had the deaths occurred under other circumstances, but it did not fail to note the cause of death. Courfeyrac had been torn apart by grapeshot. Joly and Lesgle bayoneted. Feuilly had taken three bullets. Bahorel…well, he'd been there to see Bahorel bayoneted.
And Prouvaire, with multiple bullet wounds.
It had been found that Prouvaire had been shot while attempting to escape – no matter to the chairman of the inquiry that his wounds had been to the chest. Anyone attentive to the evidence submitted would have found the account of a national guardsman who indiscreetly referred to the summary execution of a captured insurgent, but no one had bothered. No one had seized upon the incident – not even the Republican press.
The high number of fatalities at the rue de la Chanvrerie had caused some comment in the newspapers, but of public indignation there was little. Unlike the rue Transnonain incident two years later, there had been no Honore Daumier to document the slaughter in a memorable lithograph. As the dead were combatants and not bystanders the incidents would not have been regarded as comparable anyway. Nor had there been any survivor willing to bear public witness, to relate the story of their struggle and capture the popular imagination. There was no Charles Jeanne to stand defiant in the dock.
The Amis de l'ABC had not entirely vanished into obscurity – their name and defence of one of the barricades of '32 had a minor place in Republican mythology, and the leaders of the society held places in the pantheon of Montegnard heroes. But as no voices had survived the rue de la Chanvrerie, their narrative was lost in the wider Republican story, merging with other émeutes, other victims. There was nothing to distinguish them from the men who fell in 1834 or 1839 or any of many more minor street battles, a democracy of death and oblivion.
He would have leaned his head against the panelling on the side of the fiacre, closing his eyes to the memories, but thought the better of it with the thick smear of macassar oil that had accumulated there.
He had not raised his own voice in the days following the June rising. The temptation to do so had been there – to defiantly throw his lot in with the dead. He might have been tried, but like so many others might have been acquitted or given a comparatively light sentence. And perhaps their story would not have been so utterly lost. But he had promised Enjolras that he would survive and rebuild, and he could not do that from a gaol cell, although later Republicans had turned their prison sufferings to a propaganda advantage.
He might have joined Blanqui, to write of the Republican cause from the perspective of suffering and struggle under the weight of incarceration. Instead, he had worked quietly for a decade, nurturing the roots of 1848.
Back to his notes. Data to keep at bay the familiar faces that threatened to paint themselves over the clinically identified and described corpses of the rue de la Chanvrerie.
Enjolras had been found within the Corinthe itself, although where precisely was not specified. With eight bullet holes in his chest. The evidence suggested summary execution. When? Had their friends carried him in there, to the makeshift ward and hospital? Or had he died within those walls, in that last ditch defense he had anticipated?
He remembered the last time they had moved in complete accord, the last communicative touch on the arm. Enjolras had drawn him in for a hasty conference over the need to provide a practical means for those to escape who would. His words had been quick and urgent, painting a vivid image of the elderly woman he had seen at the window. It was a simply, homely vision, so much the more poignant as it was so intimately observed and not an abstract image of sacrifice.
When they returned, it had taken their combined efforts to send five men from the barricades. And then Enjolras had drawn him aside again, and this time he could not have anticipated the request that would be made of him.
"A further word, Combeferre?"
Combeferre nodded absently, his mind still on the men they had sent away from the barricades.
Enjolras lead him back inside the Café, through that Hall of the Dead. Combeferre averted his eyes from the silent man tied to the post – that reminder of the aborted prisoner exchange. He had been afraid Enjolras might be too rigidly uncompromising to agree to the attempt, but when it had come to it, their chief had not hesitated. Fully acknowledging that his inclination was to fulfill his obligation to the justice of the Republic, when it came down to it he was prepared to save his friend.
Fraternité had its place in Enjolras' heart - his adamantine devotion to the abstract did not preclude love of humanity, and above all, his friends. If he were as cold as some gibes directed at him would have had it, as preoccupied with the theoretical above the human, he would have made a point of sacrificing his friend to his principles. Combeferre had never needed proof of the contrary, but their leader's concurrence in Combeferre's plan had provided affirmation of what the medical student had always known.
It was bitter indeed that it had been in vain. Prouvaire was dead.
"I need you to do something for me," Enjolras said as soon as they were alone.
"I am at your disposal."
"I need you to leave the barricade."
The words did not make sense.
"To follow up on your reconnaissance?"
"No." He shook his head firmly. "It is all as I have reported it. We have nothing to hope for. The men have spoken – they wish to remain here until the end." It was unnecessary to add that Enjolras would follow their decision. "This is why we need you to leave the barricade. You must not fall here."
"I don't understand…"
But Enjolras had all his arguments mustered as surely as he had overseen the distribution of the pavement stones they had torn from the street and assembled the bottles from the cellar.
"Listen to me – and do not comment until I am done. We will perish here, or be captured. Our work is undone for this day. But it must not end here – nor will it, even though we should all fall. What is needed, though, is continuity between what we have learned and built in the last five years and the future. We can and shall inspire here by our example, but I want to make sure our practical gains are not lost either. One of us must survive and go free."
"And you think that should be me?" Combeferre was too bewildered to be horrified at the suggestion.
"You must hear me out. I have trusted you implicitly in all. You know of the web of contacts we have here and outside Paris – all those shoots we have nurtured. You understand the overarching vision of the future beyond the immediate aim of the establishment of a Republic. The practical means, yes, but also the broader applications of our objectives." He held up his hand to stop Combeferre's protests. "There is more, too. It is you who can embody all our stories. If no one is to walk free from this place, then we are lost."
"You need me here – "
"You know the barricade will hold as long as possible with as few men as feasible – we have designed it thus. We – you – must look to future work." And here he smiled, and looked very, very tired. This was not the Enjolras who stood in the redoubt he had created for himself, alert and without fatigue despite the sleepless passing of the hours, hard, pure and invulnerable. Now, with the dim light of dawn and the lamps of the room, there were shadows under his eyes and his cheeks seemed hollow, his expression drawn.
"Of us all, you're the one with the broadest compass – you fight with us on the barricades, and you join Feuilly when he goes out among the workers and tries to educate the poor. You embody philosophy, but you have proven you can be warlike when it is called for."
"I'm no warrior, Enjolras – that's Feuilly, or even Courfeyrac."
"That's true enough," said another voice. They turned to the new speaker – Courfeyrac had padded in on stealthy, catlike feet, and they had not seen him join them. He had a uniform of the Garde nationale over his arm – Combeferre wondered where he had found or concealed it - with the corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. Combeferre almost ached to see him so very much himself in spite of their circumstances. "You're no warrior, however amply you armed yourself for the funeral, and that's yet another reason why Enjolras is right: you should go. Feuilly and I can do what is needed here on the barricade."
Enjolras nodded.
"The torch may flicker here, but it must not go out," he said. "Carry it forward for us."
Combeferre waivered.
"My oaths –"
"If you die, all that we have planted and nurtured will be swept away" Courfeyrac said bluntly.
Enjolras put his hands on either side of Combeferre's head and pulled him forward until their foreheads touched. Combeferre had his eyes closed, committing the touch of those long, sensitive fingers to memory, imprinting the warmth of Enjolras' breath on his face. He knew how this dispute would end. Enjolras would win.
"My friend," Enjolras' voice was warm, knowing and compassionate. In these hours on the barricade, it seemed more than ever that as his ideas soared towards the ideal, he was embracing his fellow man. "I know that I am burdening you with a greater sacrifice than our own. To live on is the harder fate. There is no one else of whom I could ask it. Will you promise me this?" That was his way with Combeferre – he did not order, he requested.
And Combeferre saw it all clearly – the lighting illumination of the storm, telling him it was all true. He would need to be the survivor.
He wondered if this was one of Enjolras' plans, those chessboard series of anticipated moves. How long ago had Enjolras begun preparing for this outcome?
"You can write our story one day," Courfeyrac said as the two men broke contact, clearly feeling that the mood had need of lightening and putting an arm around Combeferre's shoulder. "And can tell it as you will…I suggest making me the leader of Les Amis," he winked. Combeferre saw, even then, how completely unaffected by the jest Enjolras was. Hierarchies were nothing to him, and he would have stood aside had it been necessary. "And give Joly a serious malady – you know, he really has soldiered on admirably for a man with a cold. Make it phthisis, at the very least…" he was steering Combeferre towards the door, and Enjolras flanked him on the other side.
"I will do it. I will go –" at the last word, his voice broke on a sob. They paused at the door beyond which the wounded lay and the end to their privacy. Enjolras said nothing, but squeezed his arm and, taking the uniform from Courfeyrac – handed it to him and assisted him to dress.
Nothing remained to be said. Enjolras repeated his instructions for escape by way of the Mondetour barricade. "You know where my papers are – those that I have not destroyed."
"I – there is not time to say goodbye to the others, is there?" Combeferre asked.
"I'll tell them," Courfeyrac said, and Combeferre knew that his friend would convey all that he had said and left unsaid. He nodded.
He looked back once after they had helped him over the barricade, raising a hand in farewell. The dawn light had not yet reached for into the small laneway to make seeing easy, and his eyes were dimmed with tears, but he could make out their forms standing at the junction of the streets, watching him depart. Enjolras's hair was softly backlit into a halo glow, and he smiled bitterly a little at the morning light providing so blatant a symbolic touch. His friends stood so close they might have been holding hands.
Lonely as the way in front of him was, he envied their journey, the one that had diverged from his own. Where they went, they went together. The path that stretched out ahead for him seemed infinitely more desolate, bereft of joy, bound for a destination of which he must not lose sight. Marianne's embrace had never seemed colder, but he must don the armor of the ideals his friends had shared and find the way forward.
He jumped as the carriage door was opened, bringing him very abruptly back to his present circumstances. He had not realized that they had come to a halt, and must have been sitting there for some time. "Your destination, monsieur" said the butler on the other side, who had descended the steps of the house to meet him. Had the driver been trying to raise Combeferre's attention? He was truly becoming absent minded and distracted. Courfeyrac had always said –
He consciously broke off the thought. He didn't want to think of Courfeyrac at that moment.
He smiled at the butler – interesting, either Pontmercy or his wife didn't favor the ridiculously archaic attire of the powdered wig variety so beloved of both the nouveau riche and the Ancien Regime – and hurrumphed a little.
"So sorry – I must have dozed off," he apologized. The butler inclined his head in polite acknowledgement.
"Monsieur Combeferre? Monsieur le Baron is expecting you."