Fleur-de-Lis Read online

  Fleur-de-Lis

  by

  Isolde Martyn

  International Award-winning Author

  FLEUR-DE-LIS

  Awards & Accolades

  Romantic Novel of the Year, Finalist

  Romance Writers of Australia

  ~

  "In addition to her well-drawn compelling protagonists, Martyn a vividly depicts a supporting cast of fictional and historical figures, famous and obscure. This outstanding novel cements her reputation for exceptional romantic historical fiction."

  ~Margaret Barr, The Historical Novels Review

  "A great read for those who like to steep themselves in a rich historical novel and a romance."

  ~Kathe Robin, Romantic Times (US)

  "You don't get too much more romantic than Paris….Those who love the romantic genre will love this"

  ~Annelise Balsamo, Australian Bookseller and Publisher

  "Well-researched reality abounds in Isolde Martyn's novel –and so does romance!"

  ~Woman's DayMagazine, Australia

  ISBN 978-0-9873846-3-8

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  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Apart from references to actual historical figures and places, all other names and characters are a product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this eBook via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  Copyright Isolde Martyn 2004, 2013. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  ISBN 978-0-9873846-3-8

  1. Historical fiction. 2. French Revolution (1789-1795) 3. Paris—1793

  Cover by Kim Killion www.thekilliongroupinc.com

  eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com

  Thank You.

  For my daughter Claire

  and my son Leo

  with all my love

  List of Characters

  Asterisks denote the fictional persons appearing in this novel;

  the rest are real historical people.

  Fleur (Françoise-Antoinette)*

  a young woman living in the Forest of Grimbosq de Montbulliou outside the city of Caen in Normandy, France.

  youngest daughter of the Duc de Montbulliou by his second marriage

  Blanchette*

  a middle-aged donkey

  Thomas*

  chef in the service of the Duc de Montbulliou

  Mme Estelle Thury*

  Fleur's aunt

  Philippe de Montbulliou*

  Fleur's brother, an émigré (fugitive) in Coblenz

  Marguerite*, Henritte*, Cécile*

  daughters of the Duc de Montbulliou by his firstmarriage. Half-sisters to Fleur

  Matthieu Bosanquet*

  a gentleman of Paris

  Charlotte Corday

  Fleur's friend from school days

  Mme de Bretteville

  Charlotte's aunt

  Raoul de Villaret*

  a deputy of the Convention and member of the Committee of General Security

  Robinet*

  a sansculotte (working-class) friend of Raoul's

  Laurent Esnault

  a lawyer in Caen

  Abbé Gombault

  fugitive priest from Caen, under deportation order for refusing to swear loyalty to the revolutionary government

  André Beugneux*

  close friend and lodger of Matthieu Bosanquet

  Machiavelli*

  a snaky boarder of Matthieu Bosanquet

  Pierre Mansart*

  Fleur's business agent

  Marie-Jean Hérault

  a friend of Raoul's. Formerly king's advocate and

  de Séchelles

  advocate-general in the Parlement of Paris. Member of the Convention for Seine et Oise.

  Felix Quettehou*

  nephew to Matthieu Bosanquet. Printer with extremist views and influential member of the Paris Commune (city authority)

  Columbine (Feathers)*, Juanita (Waterspout)*, Raymond (Beanpole)*, Albert (Whiskers)*

  actors at the Chat Rouge

  Emilie Lemoine*

  a grisette (working-class Parisienne)

  Armand Gensonné

  friend of Raoul de Villaret. Member of the Girondin faction in the Convention

  François Boissy d'Anglas

  son of Raoul de Villaret's godfather. Former major domo to the King of France's brother, the Comte d'Artois. Member of the Convention.

  Jean-Paul Marat

  Sardinian. Formerly a doctor and a scientist, now a journalist and popular extremist. Member of the Convention

  Jacques-Louis David

  Raoul's early mentor. Official artist of the Revolution and a member of the Jacobin faction in the Convention

  Georges Danton

  lawyer and famous orator. Minister of Justice during the September 'disturbances'. Member of the Convention

  Maximilen Robespierre

  leader of the Jacobin deputies in the Convention

  Jean-Baptiste Carrier

  friend of Quettehou and procurator from the Auvergne. Member of the Convention

  Georges-Auguste Couthon

  supporters of Robespierre. Members of the Louis-Antoine de St Just the Convention

  Mme Manon Roland

  wife to Roland, a former minister of the Girondin government

  François-Nicholas Buzot

  Mme Roland's clandestine lover and member of the Girondin faction in the Convention

  Prologue

  January 1789

  Since the stable behind the Clef d'Or was where he had been initiated into making love some seven years earlier, Raoul de Villaret rode into the town of Clerville in the January twilight wondering whether he should just pass through or halt and revisit the generous "magdalene" who had provided such a delightful tutorial. Not for an anniversary encore, of course—Bibi must be prodding forty by now, and at twenty-two, he had become choosy—but perhaps to say thank you for the only decent memory he had of the place.

  His stomach complained of hunger and he frowned against the knife-edged wind as he rode towards the town square, knowing he would be unlikely to find a decent supper before he reached Rennes. The rivers were frozen over, the grindstones of the watermills were locked in ice and there was little flour. He had seen desperate hunger in the haggard faces of the migrating workers he had passed on the road. He doubted they would find labour in Clerville or anywhere else in the region; he doubted also that the King's call for every parish to submit a cahier, a written list of grievances, would make much difference. The incidents of unrest were growing and it looked as though he was encountering one now.

  The Place Saint-Denis was still crammed with the poorer people who had come in for market day and there was a great deal of angry shouting going on. They had snared a grain transport. The carters, pulled from the running board, were struggling within the crowd, and the four-dragoon escort had foolishly let themselves be isolated in front of the market cross. Astride on top of the grain sacks, defying the soldiers
' muskets, a gaunt workman was addressing the crowd.

  "The King does not wish our children to starve, patriots!" he exclaimed, his dialect proclaiming him a local man. "It is his evil counsellors and that Austrian bitch who are trying to squeeze every last sou from us. Take the grain to feed your children, mes braves, and you," he snarled at the dragoons, "shoot us if you dare!"

  Another man sprang up onto the cart and jabbed a finger in the air. "Go and observe the fine English lawns, my friends, the strutting peacocks, the mulberry trees. Why should we labour while the Duc de Montbuillou leads a life of idleness? We're not even allowed to shoot his doves for eating our peas. Has he done anything to keep us from starvation? No! Break open his barns, I say! Let us seize the grain and feed our children!"

  "To the chateau!" a woman bawled. "Burn it down!"

  "And be broken on the wheel?" scoffed someone.

  "Starve then!" the second orator exclaimed. "The only difference between us and the noblesse is in the ledgers! I say burn the records which make slaves of us! To arms!"

  One of the dragoons fired above the head of the speaker, merely to frighten him, but the crowd erupted in bitter fury.

  Raoul reined his horse Nostradamus round. The chateau? For years, he had tried to forget the Chateau de Clerville, vowing never to set foot within its detestable proximity, but the painting was there. Jacques-Louis David's painting! He could not let a work of David's be destroyed, even though he loathed every oiled pore of this particular canvas; even though to see its brilliance again would make him remember that humiliating month at Clerville when he had been David's apprentice.

  With hatred burning anew, he circumnavigated the square through the back streets and spurred out of the town ahead of the mob. As he rode, it was not just David's impatient snarl Raoul recalled, but the sting of the Duc de Montbulliou's horsewhip across his shoulders and the sniggers of the duke's daughters. Their hateful laughter whirled around his temples, so infecting his senses that he grew hot with shame beneath his greatcoat, remembering the ripe, pointing breasts flaunted to torment him.

  He drew rein at the gates of the chateau, smiting his riding crop against the ironwork, gratified that the old gatekeeper hobbled forward in his sabots with a respectful touch of his forelock. Thank God for that! So no ghost of a thin, gauche sixteen-year-old was recognisable any more.

  "There is a mob on the way," Raoul exclaimed and seeing a boy in the doorway of the gatekeeper's cottage, he yelled, "Run to the servants' quarters as quick as you can and warn them. There's a rabble coming to burn the chateau. And you, man, for Christ's sake, let me through!"

  Instead of following the carriage drive, Raoul turned into the basse-cour. His memory served him well; beyond the clipped hedges that hemmed in the lawns and flowerbeds was a copse sheltering an English grotto. The old artificial cave was as he remembered it, large enough to tether Nostradamus out of sight.

  Jamming his hat firmly down and with his neckerchief back to front so he might draw it up to hide his face, Raoul made stealthily for the rear terrace of the chateau and tested the second window of the billiard room. The frame slid up easily as it always had. He climbed into the cold gloom of the unlit room and, skirting the billiard table, opened the door to the salon. Despite the heavy odour of lavender polish, a faint hint of mustiness spoiled the elegant room like the whiff of sweat from beneath a nobleman's expensive waistcoat.

  Only the candelabra on the harpsichord had been lit. Raoul's gaze slid round the walls and halted at the painting which hung beside the opposite door. Not David's, but a more recent portrait of Montbulliou and his son. Both faces mocked Raoul with their supercilious expressions just as they had done in real life. The duke's eyes bore smugly into his, forcing him to remember the shame and the violence, the raised whip beating him painfully to his knees. Merde, it was tempting to drive his knife into that smirking, canvas mouth. He dragged his stare away and, pulling his neckerchief up over his mouth and nose, let himself into the vestibule. David's painting did not hang there either. Time was running out. The tick-tock of the grandfather clock echoed up the great staircase and he could hear raised voices in the common room.

  Could the painting be in one of the bedchambers? The sound of breaking glass drove him to take the quickest way—up the backstairs—to Montbulliou's dressing-room. A startled footman collided with him in the hall, but he thrust the man roughly aside with a warning to save himself, then hurtled up the stairs to the duke's apartments. Glad of the scant lighting, he edged cautiously forward. The upper floor was chill and silent. There was no evidence of the family. Just as well. It would have been a unique pleasure to scar the duke's face; an unwise pleasure that might send him to the galleys or the Bastille.

  Orange-flower water and pomade! The dressing-room stank of the duke, but there above the shining, polished side table hung his quarry—David's masterpiece, a greater work than any of the artist's more heroic paintings. Or so Raoul thought. He stared at it for a moment, reabsorbing its magnificent sensual power. Gauzy, lascivious and heartless, the duke's three oldest daughters—the goddesses Venus, Minerva and Juno—watched from their frame as he came closer.

  The fourth daughter in the painting was not looking at him. She had been nine years old and too fat to play a beauteous goddess. Instead, she had been coerced to model as the chubby Cupid offering a golden apple as a prize. A fruit so real and luscious that Raoul could have snatched it from the canvas; the apple that the youth Paris was to award to the goddess he judged to be the loveliest. But Paris was not in the painting; David had made the beholder of the painting Paris. No, you judge, he had said to the world.

  The sound of splintering wood and shouting jolted Raoul back to reality. Swiftly, he dragged a Louis Quinze chair across to the wall, grinning as he stepped with mudded soles onto its fine brocade. Then he drew his knife from its sheath.

  "Get down!"

  A young girl stood in the inner doorway, pointing a pair of duelling pistols at him. The weapons wobbled but there was determination in the plump young face. Cupid! He had no trouble recognising her. About fifteen now. Long brown hair, loose save for a band that held it free of her forehead, tumbled down to an indiscernible waist clad in tawny velvet.

  "Shoot me then," he challenged, and turned his back to her.

  "I mean it, thief!" said the girl.

  Raoul ignored her. He was halfway through hacking the top edge of the canvas free when a bullet exploded into the frame, missing his fingers by a skin's breadth.

  "Diable!"

  In the second she had to toss the spent weapon away and change the loaded one to her right hand, he was off the chair and grabbing her wrist. The child held on, her mouth in a grim line. She had courage. Only with a sharp twist did he manage to prise the weapon from her, and then she began to kick and pummel him. Raoul tried to wrench himself free. He had to get back to his task before the mob broke in, but, like a little terrier, the girl had his shoe off and now she had hold of his stockinged foot.

  It was the bitter scream of a woman in the courtyard below that made her let go. Cursing, Raoul stooped, tugging his stocking back into his knee breeches. Then, not taking his gaze from the girl's eyes, he backed away, quickly disarming the loaded pistol. He tucked it in his belt and grabbed up his shoe. Perhaps the chit thought he was going to beat her with it, for she blinked up at him from her hands and knees in consternation. But he was wrong; she was listening intently.

  "What is going on?" she asked, frowning.

  "Don't you know?" Safe behind his neckerchief disguise, he looked down at her confused face with the greatest of pleasure. "They are ransacking your chateau."

  "Who are you talking about?"

  "Your people, your poor overtaxed peasants. They are going to—" Good God, what was he doing wasting time? "Lock the door!"

  With another oath he sprang back on the chair and started working at the painting again.

  The girl showed some sense. She calmly turned the key and returned to his
side, looking at him like a puzzled puppy.

  "Save yourself, Cupid," he exclaimed. "Get out before they kill you!" He jabbed a finger towards her father's bedchamber. "Out by the passage!" She stared at him appalled as he wrenched the last corner of the painting free.

  Thrusting the canvas under his arm, he propelled her towards the inner door. "Wait, take this." He seized a Sèvres figurine from the mantelshelf and thrust it into her arms. "Hold up your skirt."

  "What?" But she obeyed as he grabbed whatever else he could from the shelf and desk: a small timepiece, a porcelain dish—all dropped into her keeping. "Come on! Quickly!"

  He knew the passageway or thought he could find it; her older sisters had locked him into it seven years ago, but it was Cupid who ran her hands over the carved panelling and twisted the bottom grape. A tiny wooden door clicked open disclosing a lever.

  The mob was kicking at the door of the outer chamber.

  "Get it open, damn you!"

  "I've never worked it by myself," she protested, wriggling the lever.

  "You won't be alive to try again. Yes, that way!" Raoul sighed in relief as a hidden door slid open. A dank, earthy smell filled the chamber. He shoved the girl into the opening, seized a candlestick and awkwardly pushed in after her. There was scarcely time to yank the lever panel to before the room's outer door splintered.

  "Don't move!" He laid his fingers warningly across her lips. She froze beneath his hand and they waited while, beyond the wall, the mob began to destroy her father's beautiful room. He could feel her seething panic against his fingertips.