Marey nodded, recalling the past as he spoke: “Of course—it was a spectacle of overwhelming grandeur. You, though, were so excited you actually shouted out. Let me think—what was it you yelled?”

  “‘Madame Deficit!’” the priest laughed. He went on: “And thanks to that one line of yours, the King’s guards seized us both and beat us half to death; afterward we suffered a second punishment from Bishop de Talleyrand—locked in an empty cellar for three days and three nights, living on rainwater and whatever we scraped from rat holes—until the Reverend Mother came to our rescue.”

  André gave a thin smile. “Yes. I thought we would die in that dank, terrifying cellar. When the Reverend Mother finally carried our half-dead bodies back into the light, I swore I would see the bishop and the King’s guards punished. Hence, the unfortunate Bishop de Talleyrand now lies in a sickbed, groaning and awaiting God’s embrace; as for those two palace guards who tormented us, they’re nowhere to be found, so poor Louis XVI must stand in for them. Heh. So long as I am in Reims, Louis XVI and his family will not escape abroad through Champagne.”

  The topic was too sensitive. Father Marey forced an awkward smile and let it drop. As André’s only confidant from childhood, he knew better than anyone the man’s implacable temper. The bishop’s “stroke” and coma were, in truth, the prosecutor’s handiwork in the hospital. He had even instructed the physicians to grant the prelate one lucid hour a day—and placed a vial of poison within arm’s reach. By Catholic doctrine, suicide is forbidden—how much more so for a high cleric.

  In the two months since his crossing, André had fused completely with the orphan André’s memories—and with the resentments buried there. He was no saintly soul, but a man of “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” In his former life he had bided his time for over ten years to avenge his parents; this life would be no different. All the more so since, in contemporary France, the Church was an easy target—bullied and insulted at will.

  Fortunately, André still held to reason. His reprisals against the Reims Church were limited to those with whom he had private enmity; the Reverend Mother’s kindness further restrained him, lest he provoke a fierce backlash from the great religious power of this “uncrowned” city.

  Perhaps Louis XVI would never grasp that, on the very day of his coronation, he sowed the seeds of the three Bourbon kings’ gravediggers: André, Danton, and Robespierre. The orphan André had his hatred forged by a guard’s beating in the cathedral; the peasant’s son Danton, denied a place at the ceremony, nursed his grievance; the student Robespierre, forced to kneel in the rain and recite praises to the royal couple, felt only humiliation.

  …

  Among the many statues in the chapel stood one little-noted figure of Joan of Arc, a standard raised behind her. During the Hundred Years’ War, she led French arms to lift the siege of Orléans; on 17 July 1429, the Dauphin was made king at Reims Cathedral. Statues of Joan are uncommon in Catholic churches; beyond Orléans, this Reims figure is the other notable example.

  Before the image of the Maid, André stood silent for a long time, as if wrestling with a thought. Father Marey was not surprised. In boyhood, André had loved Joan’s story, listening to every tale; he loathed Charles VII for betraying her.

  In truth, across the centuries, Joan’s image has wavered. Outside Reims and Orléans, French judgments were mixed. Was she a devout believer? A maleficent witch? A wanton who climbed by seducing the great? Thus, many Joans appeared.

  The Chronicle of King Charles VII (1450) recounts her feats—saving Orléans, the Loire campaign, and aiding the coronation—yet in the same breath brands her heretical and evil. France’s writers of that age gave her scant regard.

  William Shakespeare, in Henry VI, made her a conjuring “witch,” a shameless woman who, to escape death, would seduce anyone. It was, perhaps, his national posture: he was an Englishman, and from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, England and France were foes four and five centuries running.

  Humanists of the Renaissance disliked her Gothic cast; the churches also kept her at arm’s length. Even France’s philosophes did not care for the peasant girl. Voltaire, eager to slight the Catholic Church, smeared her as a strumpet, dragging her down to a mere paramour of medieval lords.

  So that now, in Parisian salons, the name “Jeanne d’Arc” calls up licentious innuendo. A decade hence, however, Napoleon—out of political need—will steer opinion to celebrate Joan as savior of France and finally set her among the nation’s myths.

  And André, in time, will also need Joan’s image as a banner—stressing that she (and he likewise) was born poor and lowly, yet could save France in peril; he will pour nationalism and patriotism into her story and win future praise. While by deriding the faithless Charles VII as timid, weak, and foolish, he will strike at the Tuileries’ Louis XVI and the Bourbons entire.

  To the common people, André will fashion himself into a male Joan; to allies and subordinates, he will be a second Richelieu.

  …

  André’s inward battle lasted an age. When Marey’s patience ran out, and he reminded his superior how late it was growing, André came back from his reverie with a self-mocking smile. He quietly instructed the Second Lieutenant of intelligence at his side to have Penduvas compile every account of Joan of Arc kept by the Church and the people of Greater Champagne—for future use.

  In the reception room behind the choir, Father Marey had taken possession. Fire roared in the hearth, warming the cold stone. As a guest, André lounged on the sofa by the flames, very much at ease with a cup of hot coffee; opposite him, the young priest had shed his heavy black cassock for a light coat with a Roman collar.

  “My dear friend—how are you taking to the life of a parish priest?” André asked with a smile.

  “You know I never liked the clerical state,” Father Marey answered tartly.

  Indeed, Marey longed to leave the Church and return to ordinary civilian life. In the orphanage, he had had no choice: unlike André—clever and well-behaved from childhood, winning favor, sent on to the Church school free of charge, then to the University of Reims to become a respected lawyer, a Paris prosecutor, and now deputy chief provincial prosecutor—Marey had no way forward but holy orders. And now, he had been “kidnapped” by André into priestly office: dignity without liberty.

  “Hold on two or three years more,” André said, raising his cup to console him. “When the time is ripe, I’ll arrange your exit.” Though raised in the Church, André had few clerics he truly trusted; the handsome, tall, straight-nosed Charles de Marey was the best candidate—faults included. He had a weakness for women and was entangled with more than a few fine ladies of the town. But in this, money- and pleasure-loving André had no standing to reproach his boyhood friend.

  Reims, an “uncrowned” city for centuries, had about 50,000 souls (including nearby villages) and nearly 1,000 clerics—an extreme ratio of one to fifty versus one to 500 elsewhere—well outside the Assembly’s reform targets.

  With military and civil power in hand, André undertook a sweeping purge. First, with firm evidence—or convenient invention—he forced those morally compromised or quietly resistant to him to write confessions and accept banishment from Reims in lieu of criminal process. The less compliant met with “accidents.”

  Next, to meet the National Constituent Assembly’s demands, he shut down dozens of convents and monasteries not devoted to charity or education. Hundreds of monks had to depart or return to lay life; over one hundred nuns were temporarily placed with the well-regarded Reims Asylum—expanded to several times its former size, sheltering over 1,000 orphans—where they served as teachers or staff.

  By the New Year 1791, the number of clerics in the Reims region had been driven down to about 400, most now working in the orphanage; the city had scarcely one hundred full-time priests and clerics. The Church grumbled, but André’s reforms moved forward under an iron hand.

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  Meanwhile, the National Constituent Assembly and the Marne Commune voiced support. In all of Reims, only one person could denounce the deputy prosecutor’s profanities and remain untouched afterward.

  Thinking of her, André asked casually, “The Reverend Mother still refuses to see me?”

  Marey nodded, helpless.

  Though André had been back for weeks, the orphanage’s Reverend Mother still rejected every request from the dictator of Reims. The devout old nun declared publicly that she would not receive the child she had raised, who now sought to ruin the holy work of God—“a satanic devil.”

  There was nothing André could do. Had anyone else shown such hauteur, the dictator would have taught them the weight of power. But this was the woman who had raised him for more than ten years. Across two lives, he felt no anger, only a hope that time would wear away the misunderstanding.

  He dropped the unhappy theme and turned to daily church business. On his proposal, with both the bishop and the vicar incapacitated, the remaining parish priests and abbots of functioning churches and houses would form a Reims Ecclesiastical Standing Council. There would be seven principal members, tasked with coordinating and managing routine religious affairs in Reims and its environs. With André’s backing, Father Marey—his intimate friend—was duly “elected” chief representative (secretary) of this local religious body.

  To anchor Marey’s authority, André ordered part of the Church’s liquid assets unfrozen and, per the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, had proper salaries paid to priests and clerics of every grade, including arrears.

  Under the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, a city of Reims’s size (over 50,000) set the parish priest’s annual pay at six thousand livres (thirty–fifty percent higher in Paris); vicars received four thousand—about equal to a local prosecutor—with lower grades stepping down in turn.

  Setting aside the much-criticized Decree on the Clerical Oath, the Civil Constitution was, for lower clergy, often a net gain. Most priests could not live from poor parishes; and, being genuinely devout, they seldom oppressed the faithful. As public officers they would be paid regularly and could devote themselves wholly to God.

  The premise, of course, was that the state could pay on time. In Paris, even, salaries were cut; most of the nominal stipend came in depreciating assignats; arrears were commonplace; many clergy saw only three months’ pay in a year and grew bitter toward the Revolution.

  In Reims, none of these worries applied—for now. In town and country alike, stipends were paid monthly and in full. This was Bishop de Talleyrand’s “merit”: twenty years of squeezing the commonwealth had left a hoard rich enough to fund wages for Reims’s 400 clerics for years.

  Thus Father Marey and his council quickly won broad support among clergy; resentment toward André softened. Humans are creatures of interest; priests are no exception.

  In November the Decree on the Clerical Oath passed first reading in the Assembly. A month later Louis XVI, in the Tuileries, signed it into law. From Paris to Strasbourg, zealots rushed to trumpet it; anti-religious fanatics banded together and stormed churches—daggers and clubs in hand—forcing priests to declare themselves for or against.

  Reims remained relatively calm, but André knew the crisis could arrive any day. He told Father Marey, “I have memorialized the National Constituent Assembly and, in my capacity as deputy chief provincial prosecutor of the Marne on behalf of the people of Reims, declared our unconditional support for the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the Decree on the Clerical Oath.”

  “André—are you mad?” Marey stared, shocked—at the great man who had shared his orphanage life for more than ten years.

  “This is your home of over twenty years,” he protested, stamping his foot. “You know Reims is a Church city. The vast majority of priests will never accept the Decree on the Clerical Oath. Have you become an atheist—will you force them, with bayonets and guns, to change their faith?”

  History showed what followed at Reims: the Oath crisis would leave half the city ruined; the ancient University of Reims leveled; hundreds of clerics jailed; most slaughtered by enraged mobs and Marseillais volunteers before foreign armies reached Champagne.

  André smiled. “I know. That’s why, in my report to the Paris Religious Committee, I will state expressly that every non-compliant cleric has already departed of his own accord—or been expelled from Reims.”

  He lifted a hand to quiet his excitable friend and continued: “As for who, in Reims, counts as an oath-taker—well, you and I will decide. If a man lays his hand on the Rights of Man, or on the Constitution, or even on the Bible, and mutters a few passable words, you will deem it valid. Your task is to keep the clergy quiet and off my desk. How I answer the provincial commune and the Assembly is my job. You, meanwhile, will watch the anti-clerical mood around Reims—and any extremes.”

  Relieved—it was merely a matter of “managing upward”—Father Marey reported the present calm. Formerly, under joint pressure from Mayor Basile and Prosecutor Hubert, none dared assault the churches. “Much the same now,” he said. “Your gendarmes parade on their tall horses through every street and alley—no one is bold enough to challenge your authority openly.”

  “Good,” André nodded. “The gendarmerie, the National Guard, and the mounted police have orders to increase patrols in town and countryside. Any sign of violence is to be crushed at once. If needed, the Champagne Composite Regiment will support.”

  A week earlier he had instructed Captain Chassé to expand the gendarmerie within three months to a battalion of 500—no longer mere disciplinarians but a true strategic reserve.

  Marey then remembered a request. “A radical cleric at the University of Reims has approached me privately—he wants you to order City Hall to restore the Jacobin Club’s Reims branch. Your view?”

  André pursed his lips, thought a moment, and gave clear direction: “Granted. I will have Mayor Basile and Prosecutor Hubert draft a plan this week to restore certain activities—unseal the doors, return some fittings.”

  It was unavoidable politics. He would not, for now, cross the Parisian Jacobin leadership head-on. But under his eye, the Reims branch would be closely watched—and its leadership would be his.

  The Reims press controls remained; André rejected the Marne Commune’s pleas to relax them. Any person or group publicly calling for an end to censorship went on a secret blacklist for surveillance by the gendarmerie and the Reims police. As for the radical cleric at the university, André strongly urged Father Marey to send him off—under the pretext of study exchange—to the seminary at Marseille, 700 kilometers away, and best of all to remain in Provence forever.

  Lighter matters followed. At the city ruler’s request, the priest recommended several useful hands.

  “Remember Berthe Desmont? A year above us—the tall, thin lad with spectacles who hardly spoke. Not an orphan—his family are a noted Reims line of lawyers. He’s now an assistant prosecutor and came with his father to seek an audience with the deputy chief provincial prosecutor.”

  “Fair-weather men who ride the current—one more, one less,” André smiled, noncommittal.

  Marey rolled his eyes and went on. “Pierre Flon—your old schoolmate for a year before he left for the Netherlands. He’s just back from Rotterdam and is editor-in-chief of the city’s largest paper. Short of stature, striking of face—he married a champagne merchant’s wealthy daughter; the dowry was one hundred and twenty thousand livres.”

  André nodded. “Pierre is an old acquaintance of my gendarmerie captain, Captain Chassé, from Holland. I plan to have him organize and head the news and publications committee.”

  “And Lapelle Bruce—big, rough, a bottomless stomach, brains a little slow. With several recommendations from the Reverend Mother, he got a helper’s berth in the Reims police ten years ago. Last August, he used the two hundred livres you gave him to grease the Reims South District commissaire and became a beat constable,” Marey said.

  André remembered and laughed. “Ha! I’d forgotten him. When did I give him one thousand livres? Oh—of course, through the Reverend Mother. Other than you and the Reverend Mother, no one in Reims has received a gift from me. Very well—I’ll have someone keep an eye on that big oaf.”

  “And you must help kind Blanc Deyo. Ten years ago, it was his twenty livres that saved us from jail. No, you misremember—it was you who wanted to give the Reverend Mother a bronze Virgin for Christmas Eve and egged me on to steal… All right, proud Lucifer—don’t flare up—back to the point. Our poor Jew, fired by foolish advice the summer before last, carried a great shipment of champagne to Paris; rioters robbed him on the road. To pay debts and feed his family he sold his shop and now works as an auditor at the Champagne Exchange…”

  “Blanc Deyo? Good. Pay off all his debts for me. Ask him whether he prefers to remain at the Exchange or join Ouvrard’s team. If the former, he will receive two thousand livres; if the latter, he will receive an opportunity.”

  …

  As Marey named each person, André jotted a note. As usual, the gendarmerie would run quiet checks; if they met his political standards and had the needed abilities, he would extend a hand to old acquaintances.

  Two hours later, a knock from the Second Lieutenant of intelligence ended the private talk. Days earlier, André had accepted an invitation from the Champagne Exchange’s chairman, the Comte de Saizia, to attend this evening’s banquet and ball at the comital estate.

  In Reims, “banquet-and-ball” is one word. The wine must be champagne or the district’s red. Before Napoleon III, apart from Bordeaux, France’s other wine regions were little known abroad: ninety percent of production fed the home market; a mere ten percent left through Bordeaux’s port to Britain, America, Spain, and their colonies. Thus, “Bordeaux” became shorthand for French wine, while famed French wines—like sparkling champagne and Burgundy—remained obscure overseas.

  As for the Comte de Saizia, André had some impression: a courteous, elegant old gentleman, an enlightened noble known for charity; close to Mayor Basile in business; and, it was said, the comte’s second son Conot hoped to marry the mayor’s younger daughter, Louise.

  Note:

  Madame Deficit: A popular nickname aimed at Queen Marie Antoinette, accusing her of extravagant spending and blaming her for the state’s financial crisis.