Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (17 page)

The count laughed. “That is so true,” he said. He extended his hand. “Welcome, scholar from England,” he said. “I can’t remember when we last had a poet here. We were mainly dancing or hunting, eh, Annette? By the by, you didn’t...encounter anyone on the way here?”

“Whom do you mean? We met only a cart-man who was quite upset at Monsieur William.”

“Oh, that’s fine, then....There’s been some complaint about people on the road, that’s all. I’ll go rile up Cook; tell her we ’re having that dinner, after all. Show him around, Annette. Hope you like the improvements since the last time you were here,” and he disappeared toward the kitchen.

I had only visited once since the looting, and that first Epiphany after father’s death, before Maman remarried, the château was still bare. There were scarcely enough chairs and plates for those of us at table, just one new couch (not of the quality of the old ones), and the walls were still naked. Now in the front salon I saw that the Turkish couch had returned, even the firescreen with the little semi-nude Grecian figures. In the hall the old gilded clock sat on its place atop the ebony commode. In the second salon, the velvet couch embroidered with peacocks had taken up its former position. And in the dining room my favorite tapestry—the huntsman leaping over the log in a meadow of
mille-fleurs
and the white hart disappearing into the rabbit-filled forest—hung again, though the stag and hunter in the background had been raggedly cut out.

When the count returned, he was beaming. “How did you—?” I said.

“It was simple. I paid for it. Bought them all again. Most of those looters had lived here all their lives; some had even worked for my father. It was a bit of fun for them, the looting day. They went back to harvesting for me; I never said anything about it, then last year I sent an agent around to all the cottages to ask if they had anything they cared to sell, and I got much of my furniture back, even some porcelain plates and cups—a few are chipped, but what of that? No draperies, though—those are new—and no silverware. All that I got back I had cleaned—it was more filthy than you can imagine—and some of it’s better than it was before. Come, sit down. New tablecloth.”

Edouard glided in with three marcs
.
Another servant was building up the fire in the huge dining room hearth. This had been the main hall of the original château.

“I always felt time stood still here,” I said, “and then the looting came, and I felt as if part of my own past had been ransacked along with the château. Now—”

“Beyond the reach of time, that’s the château de Beauregard. I always deemed it symbolic that the coat of arms wasn’t stolen—I suppose they had enough to loot down here without getting up to the ceiling,” the count said.

“I understand many of the châteaux were burned, also,” said Monsieur William. “You were lucky, then, Monsieur le Comte.”

“Lucky. Yes, I suppose I was.”

“You were not here that day, Monsieur William,” I said.

“You
were?”

“Yes, we made omelettes for them all, didn’t we, Count?”

“For looters?” Monsieur William said.

The count laughed and proceeded to tell the story, filled with horror and humor, as if it had all happened to someone else.

He had got his
things
back, which he had said had no meaning in themselves, and yet, as I looked around, I felt it could never go back to the way it was, even if he ransomed every gilded and needlepointed piece of furniture back, even if the missing hunter and stag were miraculously woven back into the tapestry. The man now leaping over the log was forever alone. Without my father the château de Beauregard can be dreadfully cold and dull, I thought, and now, with its
things
returned, it may miss him even more, for he is not here to enjoy them.

Then I realized it was I who had changed. The times that hovered outside the thick oak door, and which had burst through it once, had left me more uncertain; I felt no firm foundation to my life like the foundation of this château. Marguerite was right to fear that we would all end up like the Varaches, fleeing to foreign parts.

And yet there was something else too, and as I glanced over at Monsieur William, laughing at some silly joke of the count’s, I perceived that the difference also lay right here, in this wonderfully odd foreigner, the sleeve of his plain brown frock coat on the gilded arm-rests, his long legs stretched out before him.

The château de Beauregard had never seen such a man. And he was so different than any man I had ever known: the way he broke out in sudden laughter—laughing, yes, I had often heard, even guffawing, but not a spontaneous peal that rang though a forest. And through his poems I saw an eye for nature that I had never encountered—that remembered blue patches in the icy water and kept details of faraway places pure and clear in his mind. Everything he did was frank and full of meaning—the opposite, for instance, of Monsieur Leforges’s charm and guile—and he seemed to love the world, as I did, not
things
, not abstractions, but the world itself. I think that is why I had loved poetry—not just its romantic stories, but the way it took seriously the small things that people overlook.

I bathed my face in clear water,

The bottom paved with shining stones

“This is the vast forest of Boulogne,” the count was saying; “from just riding here, you have no idea how far it stretches. There are wild places in this forest Annette herself doesn’t know exist. This is the ancient hunting ground of the kings of France. You have just skirted along its edge.”

Edouard entered and said something softly to his master. “Dinner will be ready in half an hour,” said the count. “Would you like to see something of the gardens?” Monsieur William jumped up, and the count drew back the heavy curtains and opened the French doors onto the terrace, with its view of the manicured hedges and the crisp geo-metrical paths radiating out. We walked down the stone stairs toward the lawn. Mist wound through the alley of cyclamen. In the distance we could see the small lake, set like a pearl between lawn and forest.

It was bitter cold now, but Monsieur William didn’t seem to mind. It was probably much colder than this all the time in England.

“Those paths,” said the count, holding his drink with his left hand, gesturing grandly with his right, “were laid out almost two centuries ago, as was that wing there, but the dining room, the front salon with the coat of arms—have I shown you the Beauregard coat of arms, Monsieur William?—they were built in the mid-sixteenth century, when Henri II hunted nearby with the great huntress Diane de Poitiers.”

“The woods here still have much game, Monsieur le Comte?”

William said.

“The most game-filled forest in France.”

“Do you have much poaching, Monsieur? Especially since the Revolution?”

Monsieur William still had not learned about mentioning politics in polite society.

“I allow some.”

“That is very generous of you, Monsieur. Landlords in England do not do that.”

“It’s best to overlook some things—certain people, fathers providing for families, for instance—even though I make certain, if they work for me, that their wages are fair and they always have enough bread. A band of brigands have been lurking round here off and on since the Revolution began. They’re likely responsible for what happened at the château de Chambord and perhaps even instigated what happened here. Sometimes they drift down from their permanent residence in the forest near Orléans. If they want to take a deer, it is prudent that I do not alert the National Guard; the brigands would just hide out, then take their revenge on the château. And I have had one raid here. I will not tolerate another.”

“You know of the existence of brigands, Monsieur le Comte, and the local National Guard does not?”

“It is a vast forest, as I said; it has room for a few villains tucked away under its branches.”

“You are a tolerant man, Monsieur.”

“No, only a cautious one. In all these changing times, I have one absolute: that which has stayed in my family for centuries, that which has seen intrigue and conspiracies come and go as kings came and went with their courts at Blois. My one object is this château. It will stand; I will repair every injury to it, and my son will inherit it.”

“How is Philippe?” I asked.

“Your sister Angelique was visiting with him here, before you went to Orléans. Didn’t she tell you?“

“No, she didn’t,” I said. “I suppose she’s old enough to have her own little secrets.”

“They spent the whole day together. Getting along famously.”

The count smiled. “I think she’s very good for Philippe.”

I thought, even my little sister has a beau.

Edouard appeared from nowhere and announced that the table was ready.

“You have not seen the portrait gallery of the kings,” the count said.

Monsieur William raised his eyebrows.

“Another time. Come,” said the count. “You will eat like the kings of old—like Henri II and Diane when they visited the château de Beauregard. And a grand Sunday-after-Epiphany dinner never hurt me.” He patted his belly. He was as lean as ever. “Then I will skip supper, a boring meal.”

The count kept to his word: we ate gray mullet from the Loire in butter, shallots, and vinegar; haunch of venison with chestnuts; braised green cabbage; a creamy Epoisses cheese, and little apple tarts with a fragile roof of burned sugar. The count had replenished his cellars: red wine from Chinon and white, of course from Vouvray, all served by two swift, silent servants whom I had never seen before.

The silver shone, but I put my finger on the chipped rim of my porcelain coffee cup.

Monsieur William asked us, I suppose to be polite and talk about French literature, what was our favorite play by Molière? I said,
The
Misanthrope,
because it reminded me of my stepfather. The count laughed, though Monsieur William didn’t get the joke. The count said he liked
The Bourgeois Gentleman,
for it was written right close by at Chambord, while the great Lully composed music for it to be performed for Louis XIV. “If it’s culture and history you’re after, Monsieur William,” the count said, “the Loire Valley is the place for you. And much more...
quiet
than Paris.” And throughout the conversation and the courses, Monsieur William and I would catch each other’s eye for an instant, and one—or both—of us would smile, and the count and his swift servants would fade to the periphery of my awareness.

The drapes were closed again to keep in the warmth; a huge fire blazed; the hunter pursued the elusive hart; shadows strode across the carved oak of the walls, and I could almost believe that time was an illusion, but I got up and peeked out the curtains and saw that, during our long midday dinner, the short winter day had sunk into evening, hurried on by the clouds and a coming storm. I observed that, although it was only six miles, I had rather not do it in the dark or snow.

The Frenchman grasped the foreigner’s shoulder as he shook his hand and said he was glad Monsieur William was riding Le Bleu; even if there were a blizzard, that horse could find his way. I was glad to see Monsieur William so accepted. The count had always been like an uncle to me, and now, with Monsieur Vergez’s and Maman’s marriage, I felt closer to him than to anyone else of my parents’ generation.

The air smelled of snow coming. I thought of racing the horses home but wanted to delay the parting to come. We rode in silence, and I thought how comfortable I felt in Monsieur William’s presence, even wordless, as if we had known each other all our lives.

“That was the best meal I have had in a very long time,” he finally said. “And the count is a charming fellow. He doesn’t seem too full of his superiority of class, as most of his kind would be in Britain, and perhaps here too, though I haven’t met enough aristocrats to judge. I hope, as is the Duke of Orléans, he is working with, not against, the changes in society.”

“You heard him. His concern is his château, not politics.”

“He didn’t expel from his service or have arrested the people who stole from him. Most extraordinary. Is that the main road there? I can hardly tell; the fog is so dense—it’s like ghosts gliding through the trees.”

“Maybe you can write a poem about it—the places you write about don’t have to be just the glorious Alps—”

“What was that?”

I heard only leaves chafing each other in the limitless woods on either side of us.

“The wind sometimes sounds like a waterfall through these trees. I think it’s the wind picking up the fallen leaves—your gliding ghosts.”

Then I noticed that the horses too were aware of some disturbance, ears perked forward, listening, alert. “Let’s go,” I said.

We commenced to canter, and the sound of agitated leaves continued under the trees. We could hardly see two horse-lengths in front of us in the fog. I didn’t want to urge La Rouge blindly forward. Then I thought I glimpsed the bulky outline of a horse and rider passing on my right, between the trees, through veils of mist. Another shadow moved off of Monsieur William’s side of the road. He looked over at me. I nodded. The horses’ ears were still forward; Le Bleu snorted and tossed his head from side to side. The fog was bitter cold and cut through my coat and riding habit. “Faster,” I said quietly.

We galloped into the fog and had not gone far before we had to rein in violently before two figures of horses and riders standing in front of us, not fifteen feet away: statues in cocked hats and capes, each pointing a pistol.

“Was it a passable dinner at the château de Beauregard?” said a voice on the right. “We saw you riding fast up the entryway at noon and figured you must be late for some feast. We had stale bread, didn’t we, Antoine? Whatever happened to the days when Henri IV declared that every family should enjoy a chicken stew once a week?”

“I know what happened to them,” a more uncouth voice said from the other figure. They looked indistinguishable in the fog. “Henri was stabbed to death.” He sounded amused.

“What do you want?” said Monsieur William. “We have nothing.”