Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (22 page)

“I felt responsible too,” I said. “I could have saved my father. I knew I could. I don’t know how, but I would have. I still feel that.”

“Sometimes it’s not responsibility at all. Sometimes it’s just the way of the world.”

William kissed me on the cheek lazily, and I put my head on his chest. “You smell like an oak forest after the rain,” I said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“No one,” he said.

“The snow’s melting,” I said. “It’s times like these you can hear the river, even from all the way up here.”

“Impossible,” he said. “The Loire is a quiet river.”

It seemed very important to me, then, that we hear the river, that it not be impossible. I got out of bed, opened the curtains, the window, and threw the shutters back. The cold surged in. “What are you doing?” William asked.

“You’ll see. You’ll hear, I mean,” I said.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

“Hush, and listen,” I said.

Clouds hurried toward the face of a large moon, illuminating the slate roofs of my town. Far off I could see the tower by Saint-Louis Cathedral and the bridge and the river. Then they slipped away when the clouds came. The sweet, rain-washed air rushed into the room, closed all winter.

“I don’t hear anything,” my husband said.

“Listen. You must listen hard.” He sat up, leaning on his elbow. He was listening.

A deep, constant, low sound filled the night. It was the river flowing high against its banks.

“Once you hear it, it’s unmistakable,” he said.

“Then it’s not impossible,” I said. I started to close the shutters.

“No, leave them open,” said William. “I like it like that.”

And I got back into bed and warmed myself against him. There would be other, larger things that I could never prove to him were true just by opening a window. But I had no need to prove them now.

I think we both thought, in that night in the late winter with the distant, unmistakable sound of the river coursing through the town, that our love was as permanent as the flow of all that water, season after season, through the land.

The cold, sweet air felt good. We left the window open the rest of the night.

During a pause in my conversation with Marguerite, I dipped bread in a bowl of hot chocolate, pondered again how long William could stay in France, with his meager means and with the suspicions of foreigners increasing, and at the same time noticed, outside in my sister’s garden, the first daffodils of spring along the walkway. Once I saw them, I wondered why I hadn’t also seen the quince just starting, and even a few blossoms on the plum and pear trees, their white petals against the branches still dark from the rain. Suddenly the boughs were lined with hundreds of tight, folded buds, ready to explode.

“Paul tells me the assembly has decreed that all émigrés are conspirators now, and their property is to be confiscated,” Marguerite said. “Can you believe—the Varaches as conspirators? Little Sylvie, Marie’s friend?”

“They think everyone is a conspirator,” I said. “They even accuse each other.”

“Is Monsieur William safe from being accused?”

“He’s shut himself in his room lately, working on an essay, in French, mind you, in praise of the new constitution, which he will send to his acquaintance in the assembly, the mighty Brissot. It’s called ‘The French Constitution and the Dawn of a New Era: An Englishman’s Perspective.’”

“Does he know...of what we were just talking?”

I shrugged and exhaled air and looked at the early efforts of the tree. Soon it would be its own white cloud.

“Will he want you to go to England?” my sister asked.

I shrugged again. I couldn’t remember which bore fruit first, the plum or the pear tree. That the trees would be laden with fruit was the only thing that one could really be certain of, I thought.

“I am so sick of hearing of demands for war,” Marguerite went on, “how all the émigrés gathering with the King’s brothers in Germany mean to attack us and bring with them the armies of Prussia and Austria, so we should attack them first. Well, Grandmère Vallon said there never is a good time to bring a child into the world. They just come when they want to. And it’s a good thing they do.”

I smiled at her and patted her hand. “Yes, it’s a good thing,” I said.

“When Maman and Monsieur Vergez were here for dinner the other night, they looked happy together,” she said. “It will be a bit complicated with Maman, won’t it? I think you would be happier, staying here.”

By that afternoon William had finished his essay and sent it to be read by
La Patriote Française.
We met when I was still on the last step on the Vincent stairway and he was standing in the hall below me. Without saying anything, we embraced there, and he said, someday we must have a house with a stairway, so I could always stand a step above him and we could embrace and be at the same height. I said, All right.

He said, And a river running behind it too, and took from the inside pocket of his frock coat a long, slender box and handed it to me.

I knew what kind of box it was, and upon opening it, saw a delicate pink fan. I spread it out and beheld a line of people painted on it, with a wagon in their midst, drawing something. “It’s the latest style of decoration for fans,” said William. “It’s the funeral procession of Voltaire. A great writer, and a great hero of the people.”

“It’s lovely,” I said. Gone were the days when butterflies and flowers decorated a lady’s fan. I was simply touched that William, with his little money, had bought me a present. I waved it and looked coquettishly over the top of it at him.

We were out on the terrace now, with the little fountain lapping.

Gérard and Marie came out to greet Monsieur William, and he squatted to say hello to Gérard, then took Marie’s hand, and we walked toward the blossoming trees. I showed Marie my fan.

“What are these people doing on the fan?” she said. “Where are the flowers?”

“This is the new style,” I said. “It’s the parade in Paris to honor Voltaire after he died,” I said. “We ’ll read his
Candide
when you’re a little older. He satirized the hypocrisy of governments and the absurdity of war. It’s a historical fan.”

“I prefer the flowers,” she said. Gérard was skipping before us.

Marie ran ahead to join her brother. They were enjoying a wind that came up from the river valley. Marie held her arms out straight from her sides, and Gérard, looking at her, copied her. It was the first spring wind and felt noticeably different. This one carried with it, barely discernible, a scent of the new earth.

But it was still cool, and I shivered. “William,” I said. “William, I have something to say to you.”

He stopped. I looked over at the buds on the lean branches. “I am with child,” I said. The enormity of that hit William stronger than any spring wind. He almost rocked in front of me.

He still asked the obvious question. “Are you sure?” he asked.

I nodded.

He opened his arms to me. I felt his arms around me and nudged my face into his shoulder. I felt him kiss the top of my head. “I’m so afraid and I love you so much,” I said.

He pulled me closer. I could hear his heart. He didn’t say anything.

I could hear the children shouting something to each other. William was thinking. I knew he was thinking, with the spring wind ruffling his hair.

“It’s a bad time,” I said. “I know I would like a church wedding.

Maman would want it, but the new priests are not real priests and—our ceremony by the river will do, for now. Marguerite says there are more frightening things happening every day. Grandmère Vallon says there never is a good time—”

He held me out from him, so he could see me. “I think,” he said, “that I must return to England immediately. I will solicit my uncles for money. I will publish my long poem. I will secure a position as tutor, save enough to return, and—”

“William, I don’t want you to leave. If you leave, too many forces could keep you from returning for a long time. Stay with me until the baby is born. Stay with me. Then go to England, if you must. You know I have a bequest from my father which I can draw on—”

He raised his hands in protest.

“My sister will let me stay here. I’ve already talked with her.”

“I will stay with you if it is your wish,” he said. “When is—”

“December. Sometime in December.” I raised my fan and noticed the mob of little figures and the bier of Voltaire, then the spring sun pouring in through the pink color, as through the backs of petals.

“I’m glad you will stay,” I said.

“I had another present for you,” he said, “but it seems small now, compared with what you have just told me. Here—” and he drew a folded paper from his waistcoat pocket. “I wrote some more about the story of the lovers.”

I nodded. For some reason, I thought I would cry if he read me that poem.

“This follows,” he said, “the opening of that door, if you remember, that let paradise in upon him.” He paused. “Maybe you would like to read it.”

It was better for me right now, reading it aloud, than hearing his voice say the words. How did he know that? I read,

...pathways, walks,

Swarm’d with enchantment till his spirit sank

Beneath the burthen, overbless’d for life.

Not favour’d spots alone, but the whole earth

The beauty wore of promise...

“For life?” I said.

“Overblessed for life,” William said. “There is enough in their short hours to last him more than a lifetime. The whole earth shares in the promise of their love and reflects it back to them. Look at the children,” he said. “Running under the blossoms.”

I leaned back into him and felt him pull me close. I held the poem in one hand. The children stopped shouting. “I think they’re watching us,” I said.

“That’s good,” he said. “That’s as it should be. Let’s join them.”

And he took my arm, and I leaned my head against his shoulder. I folded the poem and put it in the pocket of my linen dress. Marie still stood with her arms outstretched to the current of the spring wind up the valley. Her eyes were closed. Gérard looked sheepishly up, his shoes and stockings wet. “That’s a beautiful puddle,” I said.

William’s words shook me, and I reached my hand in my pocket and grasped the paper tight.

We returned to the house with Gérard’s muddy shoes and Marie’s messy hair and William’s arm in mine. Paul was there, home from dealing with merchants in town. His face was tight. “Have you heard the news?” he said.

“What news?” I said. “We ’ve been on a walk. Monsieur William has been shut in his room, writing.”

“France has declared war on Austria.”

“That is folly,” William said. “Austria has a vast empire from which to draw resources. She also will ally herself with Prussia. Then they’ll ask England to join the monarchies against the French Republic. This is pure folly.”

“People are happy,” Paul said. “They are singing, shouting, embracing each other. Why do people rejoice over going to war? It’s unbelievable.”

Marguerite bent down and spread her arms to her children. “I’m sorry about my stockings,” said Gérard. “Is that why Papa is upset?

Aunt Annette said it was a beautiful puddle.” His mother merely kissed him on the cheek.

I felt a vise grip my stomach. What would I do now, an unwed mother in a nation at war with its neighbors, with William a member of an enemy nation? Would we have to leave? Would we all have to follow Monsieur William back to England? And how would we live there?

“What about Prussia?” said William. “I’m sure France will declare war against her too.”

“No word yet,” Paul said.

“And England?” I said. That William would be an enemy was my greatest fear.

“England will stay out of this, for now—this is a European affair,” William said. “I’m surprised Russia is not involved.”

I felt an immense sigh of relief.

“France is not ready for war,” Paul said.

“My friend Captain Beaupuy will be leaving soon, then.”

“When wars start,” said Marguerite, “no one knows when they’ll end. Remember what Maman said of her uncle Robert, Annette? When he left to fight the English in America, he said he would be back in nine months, for Christmas, and six years later they heard he had died at Québec.”

All I remember was that Robert was Maman’s favorite uncle. She said he had died a hero. I felt the paper in my pocket, and its weight seemed so light in my hands.

“Well, it will take some time for France to muster its armies,” Paul said.

I felt William’s arm around me. “It will pass soon,” he said quietly. “England will be cautious. France cannot afford a war for long.

Austria just barks. It doesn’t want a war in Europe. It’s concerned with Turkey nipping at its borders. There are men who like to shout in this country, and there are always men like that. The constitution is stronger than they. The constitution is what France rests on. No one really wants to fight.”

“Michel Beaupuy does,” I said.

“My feet are cold,” Gérard said.

“Does this mean we ’re going to England?” said Marie. “If so, can we live near Sylvie?” Her mother said, No, no, it doesn’t mean that at all.

And as she said that, something eased within me. Fears had shaken me since Paul’s news. But a mother’s simple words of reassurance to her daughter had reminded me of something else: that France could become part of the Austrian Empire, and I’d still want to raise our child here, by the river, if I at all could. Oh, I would follow William to England if there were no other way, but it wasn’t the time, not now.

And once I understood that, somehow, I felt stronger. It was crazy of me, but I even felt fortunate to be having this baby. Why not?

The world could be falling down around me, yet I could still feel
overblessed
. I was having William’s child. I would be strong for it, for us; I would not let anything harm it. For a moment I felt myself larger than my body. I was as big as the room. I had an urge to protect everyone in it. The child will need each one of them, I thought. I will be strong for all of us. I grasped William’s hand. I looked out to the terrace and saw the first bird of this season dip itself into the fountain and shake its wings in the bright air.