On through the rue Neuve, the rue de l’Echarpe, into the colonnades of the place Royale. . Whatever it is they are doing, drunkenly doing, hurrying across the square with their pots of paint, it will not be easy to explain should they meet a patrol. And if he — the newly appointed engineer — had to explain himself to Lafosse? To the minister? (I felt constrained, my lord. I did not, under the circumstances, think I could refuse what appeared merely an excursion. Had I known what these men, whose acquaintance I had so recently made, intended. .)
They drop onto the rue Saint-Antoine, cross to the far side, pass the church of Sainte-Marie, where a dozen indigents are curled on the steps waiting for first mass at five o’clock, the hope of a coin from the hand of some pious widow.
Ahead of them now — a distance of some hundred and fifty metres — is the fortress of the Bastille, its walls and turrets black shapes cut clumsily out of the night. It looms over everything, yet somehow gives the impression of being cornered, trapped, the last of the basilisks, rearing, fearful, full of useless strength. And behind those walls? What? Scores of wretched men chained in underground cells, buried alive? Or just more stone, stone and volumes of dank air, with a few locked rooms occupied by bored though not greatly discommoded inmates, gentlemen scribblers who, having penned some satire on a royal favourite, found themselves removed from their studies by a lettre de cachet.
They pause in the doorway of a workshop. The street ahead is scoured, hats are pulled lower, then a quick word from Armand and they flit, a hunched running, across the front of the fortress to the three-arched gate beside it, the Porte Saint-Antoine. It is here, on the stone of the gate, that the government posts its notices and decrees. A rise in the salt tax, a new penalty for illegal fishing in the Seine, for emptying pots of human ordure into the street between six in the morning and six at night. The date of a sermon to be preached by the royal chaplain at Sainte-Chapelle. The date, the hour, of a branding, a hanging.
Defacing such notices is part of the trade between government and people. Occasionally, a persistent offender is pounced on by the watch, but for the most part the scrawling of an obscenity about the queen — La pute Austrienne! — or some notoriously gouging tax-farmer, attracts little official attention.
Tonight, on freshly posted notices, it is the turn of Renard, Fleur, de Bergerac, Orgue and Bêche. It is all done in less than a minute. Jean-Baptiste holds one of the pots for the furiously swishing Renard and feels his cheeks being spattered with paint. He cannot even see what they are writing, or only the single word — ‘PEOPLE!’ Then, with their brushes and pots, they are scurrying away like mice from a larder.
Breathless, back on the rue des Ecouffes, Armand invites them upstairs to celebrate the night’s action. He thinks there may be another bottle of that almond liquor somewhere, perhaps under the bed. Jean-Baptiste makes his excuses. The lateness of the hour, his journey in the morning. . He nods to them, politely, friendly even, but they are already turning away from him, offended perhaps by his lack of solidarity, of party spirit.
Holding his coat at his throat, he crosses the street. A mist is rising off the cobbles, has already swallowed the thigh-high street-posts and the ground-floor windows, and is soon sucking at the shop signs, those wood and iron exemplars — a giant glove, a pistol like a small cannon, a quill big as a sword — that dangle over the street from gibbets. He is not perturbed. He knows his way well enough, has learnt to navigate the quarter, though it may be he has forgotten that a city at night is not quite the same place as a city by day. And he is distracted by his efforts to decide what he thinks about running through the streets with a paint pot. Was it exciting? Now that it is over, he can admit that it was, a little. Exciting, but also tiresome and absurd and childish, for what will ever be changed by men flying about the town painting slogans on the walls? And such odd men too! Something freakish about them, something he does not think he should associate himself with, some quality of desperation. Surprising that Armand should trouble himself with such people, though for Armand, it is perhaps nothing but an excuse to spend the night drinking. The woman was interesting, likeable in spite of her brusqueness. And the children too. He enjoyed their company, the sweet attentiveness with which they watched him draw calm shapes on the slate.
He stops and frowns into the mist. He should by now have come out onto the rue Saint-Denis, a little above the rue aux Fers. Instead he is. . where? A street he does not recognise at all. Has he come too far north? He looks for a left-hand turning, walks what seems a good half-kilometre before he finds one that appears serviceable, sets off along its length, becomes with each step a little less confident of where he is, has the fantasy that he is walking not through the heart of Paris but through the rutted alleys of Bellême, then sees, rearing in the air above him, the buttresses of a church, a big one. Saint-Eustache? The mist is thick as wood smoke now. He goes on slowly, cautiously. If the church is indeed Saint-Eustache, then — in theory — he knows exactly where he is, but he is afraid of being fooled again, of spending what is left of the night trailing through unreadable streets, past buildings like moored shipping.
Ahead of him, the sudden sound of footsteps. Someone else is out here, someone who, from the quick, light clip of his feet, is very sure of his way. There is nothing sinister in it, nothing obviously so, yet the fear grows in him quickly. What manner of man is about at such an hour on such a night? Could he have been followed? Followed all the way from the Porte Saint-Antoine? He digs in his pockets for something he might defend himself with but finds nothing more dangerous than one of the cemetery keys. Too late anyway. The weave of the mist is unravelling. A shape, a shadow, a cloaked shadow. . A woman! A woman deep in reverie, for she is a bare metre from him when she comes to a halt. For three, four seconds they are fixed in some primitive watchfulness; then the stance of each softens a little. He knows her. There can be no mistake. The cloak, the height, that steady gaze lit by the mist’s own odd lucency, a faint blue-like light radiating from everywhere and nowhere. Does she remember him? He cannot think why she should.
‘I was walking home,’ he says quietly, almost a whisper. She nods, waits. She does remember him! He believes she does. ‘I became lost.’
‘What is your street?’ she asks, her voice as soft as his.
‘The rue de la Lingerie.’
‘By the cemetery.’
‘Yes.’
‘It is not far,’ she says. ‘You can walk through the market.’ She looks past his shoulder towards the turning he must take.
‘I have seen you before,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘You remember?’
‘You were with the musician.’
‘You are Héloïse,’ he says.
‘I was not told your name.’
‘Bêche.’
‘Bêche?’
‘Jean-Baptiste.’
He takes a step towards her. Then, after a heartbeat, takes another step. They stand there, quite private in the mist. He lifts a hand and touches her cheek. She does not flinch.
‘You are not frightened of me?’ he asks.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Should I be?’
‘No. There is no reason.’
His fingers rest on her skin. He could not say what he is doing, what he is guided by, he whose experience with women is so little. Is it her being a whore that lets him do it? But in this unlooked-for hour, words like whore, like engineer, like Héloïse or Jean-Baptiste, are empty as blown eggs.