Where the Light Falls(54)

Jean-Luc felt as though something was amiss. It seemed strange that Gavreau, his supervisor and erstwhile mentor, hadn’t been invited to the Rue Saint-Honoré. Odd that he, Jean-Luc, would enjoy this meeting while his friend, the man who had first introduced him to Merignac, knew nothing about it. Odd that, in fact, Gavreau had not been included in any of the meetings to which Jean-Luc had been invited lately.

Citizen Merignac had seemed blasé when he’d first proposed the ideas—a meeting in a café to enjoy a glass of wine and discuss a current legal case; an invitation after the workday to stroll through the gardens outside the former Tuileries Palace to discuss some recent piece of legislation. A note or bottle of wine or, in one instance, a small box of snuff, sent to Jean-Luc by Merignac, but always bearing Lazare’s compliments.

Jean-Luc had been flattered by the sporadic but thoughtful attention paid him by someone as powerful and esteemed as Guillaume Lazare. And his boss didn’t need to know, really. Gavreau had little interest in legal debate or study after work hours; it made sense that he was not included in these outings or correspondences.

But then it had turned into somewhat regular dinners. Jean-Luc had accepted these invitations, always flattered to be receiving them, and simultaneously a bit uneasy at the fact of his manager’s exclusion. And now, Merignac intended to follow through on his initial offer—he planned to introduce Jean-Luc to his patron, Guillaume Lazare.

It was a cold, windy evening at the end of the year. Jean-Luc stood on the dark street, preparing to meet the leaders of the Committee—a powerful group of Jacobin lawyers who, behind closed doors, passed laws and held the levers of power of the entire French Republic. Guillaume Lazare had personally issued an invitation to Jean-Luc St. Clair to visit the headquarters. Robespierre himself might be there.

The light of the nearby lanterns flickered on the cobblestones of the Rue Saint-Honoré as Jean-Luc approached the door. He studied a shadowed building that had the appearance of an abandoned monastery. Gothic and imposing—like so many other Parisian structures whose function had once been religious—its façade was a vast expanse of soot-covered stone and dirty windows. A mere hint of illumination gave the vague indication that life stirred within. There was little to signify that there, on the other side of the rattling windowpanes, the most powerful—and radical—figures of the Revolution assembled on a nightly basis.

The street was quiet, the muffled sound of horse hooves clopping on a parallel lane. Jean-Luc glanced over his shoulder as he climbed the two steps in front of the door. Following Merignac’s guidance, he knocked three times, slowly. Liberté. Égalité. Fraternité. He stood still, alone in the silent evening, for several minutes. Perhaps he had been mistaken about the hour, or the date. And then, from within, the doorknob turned and the wide oak panel groaned open, away from the street.

Jean-Luc was greeted by a diminutive figure in a plain black suit and white wig. The man barely acknowledged his presence, standing stiff and straight against the wall to allow passage for Jean-Luc.

“Good evening. I’m Jean-Luc, er, Citizen St. Clair, here as a guest of Maurice Merignac.”

Without looking Jean-Luc in the eye, the footman said: “Wait here.” Then he retreated into the house, disappearing from the foyer. Jean-Luc, standing alone, tried to gaze farther into the interior of the residence, but the lone candelabrum that lit the space before the front door did not cast a wide enough halo, and so Jean-Luc clasped his hands behind his back and waited.

“Citizen St. Clair?” The footman reappeared several minutes later, his expression expectant, indicating that Jean-Luc should follow him, which he did. The small man, holding a single candle to illuminate their path, led Jean-Luc into a spacious front hall, its ceiling high as a curving staircase, carpeted in red velvet, swept upward from its center. Jean-Luc followed the man into a smaller room, a parlor of some sort, off the left side of this central hall. His heeled shoes clicked heavily on a bare stone floor, but other than that, the entire space was silent. The parlor had a door on the far side of it, and it was toward that door that the footman led Jean-Luc now. Without a word they crossed the threshold, and Jean-Luc found himself in a spacious study.

It was a dark-paneled room with a low-hanging chandelier, its candles casting a murky glow on the bare walls and uncarpeted floor. In the far corner of the room sat a group of men at a small rectangular table. The dim shadows in which they sat, with books and papers surrounding them, gave their gathering a rather haunting aspect; the chandelier lit the center of the room adequately, yet they occupied the darkened corner, beyond the light, as if they shunned its illuminating effect.