Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (29 page)

“Yes.”

“There is never a perfect time. There is always something. It is good to have the child. Even if you do not see him again, which I know you will, you will have the child.”

“Yes.”

The cat nudged the side of the basket. “Any food in there for Egalité?” the woman asked. “Egalité has a nose for duck liver paté.

That is a clever name for a cat, isn’t it? Cats are the original aristocrats. The irony is luscious. Cats would never grant equality to anyone.” She laughed.

“There’s no food left, I am sorry. Only a cap.”

“What sort of cap?”

“I’m knitting a cap for my child-to-be.”

“Oh, may I see it?”

“It’s not much, yet.” I opened the basket and showed her. The other people in the coach were looking at it too. No one seemed very impressed.

“But what if it is a boy?” the woman asked, laughing again.

I appreciated that the woman was trying to be nice, but if she were really trying to be nice, she would let me be, I thought. I wished I were alone in this coach. I should be back in my own room, or in my room at chez Vincent, and be able freely to cry. I should sob properly, shake the coach with sobs. Holding back was worse than the sorrow, and the anger from it made me forget William, for a time. My shoulders and neck felt stiff from the effort, and my hands, folded on the basket, started to blur.

All the others in the coach spoke of who was in charge of Paris now. Was it the Jacobins, or were the Girondins still prominent? Or would Austria march in and restore the monarchy? The haze was back between the world and me.

I had wanted to get him a new hat, even if it were a used hat. I should have given William something. I leaned my head back. I thought of William coming in from the cold rain on Christmas night with a gift of a poem and how rude my mother had been. I smiled slightly with my eyes closed. That seemed a very long time ago. Why couldn’t I make noise and cry like a widow?

I felt the plump soft hand of the woman next to me rest on mine, for a moment, then it was gone.

I cannot tell you how tired I was, after the
diligence
had stopped in Saint-Louis Square, in front of the cathedral, after I had crossed the long stone bridge with its many arches over the river, and after I had climbed the hill, all the time leading La Rouge, and sighted the gray facade of chez Vincent. All I wanted to do was to have a hot bath and a cup of Claudette’s tisane, go to bed, and sleep a hundred years. Maybe after that century was over William would return, and we ’d raise a family with no war and no Committee of Surveillance. But mainly, I just wanted to sleep. I didn’t want to think or to act. I felt as if I had done too much of both, and felt the baby kicking—I was now over seven months along, and a comfortable bed was all I wanted.

I was greeted at the door not by old Pierre but by little Gérard, who had never opened the door before to anyone. He wasn’t even allowed. He took my hand and said, “Papa is gone to Bordeaux to look at grapes. That’s a long way away. Do you think he will be back in time for my birthday? He must be back for my birthday.” His birthday was October 11, in three days. I didn’t know why Paul had left so suddenly and at this time.

“I suspect your father will arrive just in time,” I said.

“Maman has been crying. She hurt herself in the garden. Marie won’t play with me and only wants to draw pictures. I’m glad you’re back.”

“Goodness, I’ve only been gone two days.” Then I saw my sister coming slowly down the stairs. She noticed me and flew down the rest of them.

“Nurse is looking for you, Gérard. Into your room for a nap. Come now,” and she lifted the boy and carried him back up the stairs, depositing him in the hall. “We have things to discuss about your birthday. Go rest now.” And she ran down the stairs again and into my arms, where she cried. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said into my neck. Then she pulled back and looked at me. “You poor thing. How are you?”

“Tired.”

“How’s—”

Claudette came down the hall now. I was always glad to see her happy face, and now it was tight. I embraced my old friend as well as maidservant. “Monsieur William, he’s—”

“Yes, he’s safe now, on his way to Paris,” I said. “He’s walking in the open air, so he’s happy.”

“Well, that’s a blessing, at least,” she said.

“What’s going on here?” I asked. “Will someone tell me what has happened here? Why is Paul in Bordeaux?”

“I will make you a tisane,” she said. “And boil some water for a bath. Madame would like a hot bath?”

“Very much, but I want to know why everyone is acting so strangely. What has happened? Is Maman all right? Why was Gérard left to answer the door?”

Claudette left, and Marguerite took my hand and led me into the drawing room, and we sat on the silk couch with the gilt lion paws.

She looked composed now.

“I didn’t want to tell you until after you had rested,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be pregnant and tired, but not pregnant and running away with one’s beloved from Committees of Surveillance.”

She took my hand, and her eyes watered. “Oh, Annette,” she said, “They’ve taken Paul. They’ve taken him,” and she started to cry again. She stopped and gathered herself when Claudette entered with a tray. There were two cups on it, and jam.

“It’s the apple and apricot jam,” Claudette said. “The specialty of late apricots and early apples. Annette is back, Madame,” she said to my sister. “Everything will be all right now. She is the first for the Fates to return to us. Now the rest will follow,” and she curtsied slightly and left.

“I wish I had her confidence,” Marguerite said, “in the Fates.”

“Tell me,” I said. I had taken the first sip of tea, and it warmed me.

Just its sweet familiar scent of mint and lavender, rising in its steam, helped me. I had to be strong. Going to bed now and waking up a hundred years later was not one of my options.

“First they came here, early this morning, looking for Monsieur William. Someone had told them he often stayed here. They questioned Paul, still in his dressing gown, and he said he had no knowledge of the Englishman being a spy or an Austrian sympathizer. He just thought the foreigner was a scholar and a poet and was entertaining him as such. They asked did he know the penalty for entertaining a counter-revolutionary? He said he was not aware that it was against the law to have a guest for dinner. They finally left and said Paul would now be under surveillance.”

“I am sorry,” I said. “This is all my fault.”

“No, listen,” Marguerite said. “Paul himself rode to Monsieur William’s lodging and told him, in no uncertain terms, to come here.

It was Paul’s choice. Now listen.” I had no appetite for Claudette’s wonderful jam and sipped my tea. “Paul had just concluded some business at a wine merchant’s office in town. He said he was signing the papers when he heard from the street outside, ‘Monsieur Vincent!

Help, Monsieur Vincent!’ It was old Pierre, who was waiting for Paul by the carriage. Paul ran outside and saw three
fédérés
, whose regiment had recently come into town, hitting Pierre, Pierre falling, and them kicking him on the ground. Paul immediately shoved them away, and a fight ensued. Paul was arrested for physically attacking government troops, which puts him in the category of an enemy, of a royalist counter-revolutionary. Pierre was arrested too. It seems that the
fédérés
said something disparaging to Pierre, something about him being an aristocrat’s dog, and Pierre said something back.”

“Surely the charges will be dismissed. They’ll see Paul was just trying to help an old servant.”

“That’s of no consequence. The fact remains, he physically assaulted government soldiers. They’ve had individual soldiers or small groups of them attacked throughout the provinces. They can never find who does it. Now that they’ve got one, they want to make a lesson out of him. That’s what Monsieur Duclos, Paul’s lawyer, says. He’s talked with the prefect of police, with the Committee of Surveillance, even with a judge of the peace, an old friend of Duclos.

They all said the same thing, what I’ve told you, except the judge said he was sure Paul was innocent, but his, the judge’s, hands were tied. They added that, since Paul was already under surveillance, this action against the
fédérés
assures his guilt. They’re sending him on to Orléans for trial. I’m afraid of what that means. What am I to do? I’ve told the children the Bordeaux story, but Marie suspects the truth, I think, especially after the Committee was here.”

“When are they sending him to Orléans?” I said.

“In two days, with many others. They have to walk all the way.”

“I want to visit him, and Monsieur Duclos. Where is Paul being held?”

“They had too many in the old Beauvoir Tower, and in the cellar of the new Town Hall, so they made a makeshift prison out of the abbey behind the church of Saint-Nicholas. I visited Paul there last night. It’s a wretched place, now. He hadn’t any treatment for his wounds. Oh, Annette, his poor face. He said not to worry, that he had a witness, the wine merchant in the shop, but Duclos said the merchant is afraid to speak against the Committee and the
fédérés
, lest he himself be accused of being counter-revolutionary. Duclos has even recommended that his agent withdraw money for us, that we prepare to leave the country, as others have done. He says that if the trial goes wrong, we will lose chez Vincent, and it will be much harder, if not impossible, to get our money and to leave. He’s actually got me thinking about emigrating. Can you believe that? Can you believe I would act like the Varaches and flee, and without my husband? What strange dream are we in?”

“I will talk to them tomorrow. There must be something—”

“You will need to get a pass from Duclos. Only one person is allowed to see Paul at a time. I must do business with the agent. Please bring him some bread. Be sure to bring him good bread and water. I don’t know what they give him there, if anything. That will be a relief, to know he has good bread. I was in such a hurry, I left with nothing. I washed his face with the hem of my dress and with some foul water they had there.”

Marie entered the room then. She embraced me, holding her drawing paper in one hand. “I’m so glad you’re back, Aunt Annette. Would you like to see my new drawing?”

I nodded, and she held it up for me, all orange and red leaves against a black night sky. “It is as if the tree is on fire,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It certainly is.”

I believe Claudette put some herb she had secret knowledge of in my bedtime tisane, or else the bath and my physical exhaustion took their toll, for, in spite of my worries, I slept soundly and woke fresh to visit the prison.

In the small carriage used for everyday business, Jean—the old groom of chez Vallon, whom Paul had now hired—took me first to the offices of Monsieur Duclos. I listened to the lawyer’s pragmatic cynicism. It is a tragedy, he said, but what does one do in such a circumstance? One makes inquiries, one argues one’s position to the proper authorities, one seeks out the most powerful and entreats them for support. All these he had done, he said, and to no avail. So what does one do? As unpleasant as it may be, one must look at the possible outcome of events.

And for Monsieur Duclos, then, it was a matter of logic that one must accept that one’s client of many years, the son of one’s former client, would be a prisoner of the state unless a miracle occurred in Orléans. And they do occur, daily, in the randomness of the present state of affairs, he said. It’s just that one cannot count on them.

When tragedy strikes, it’s best to be practical and not emotional; that is why he was counseling Madame Vincent to prepare for possible exile. One must pray and then prepare for the worst. It is not logical to count on miracles, he said, and smiled patronizingly. We were women who needed to be protected and to be told what to do. If there were nothing that he, Duclos, could do, with all his worldly wisdom and connections, there was certainly nothing we could do. I nodded in resignation and thanked him.

If one could not count on miracles, I thought, then one must provide them for oneself.

The anger, the outrage, that I had felt on William being denounced to the Committee of Surveillance by Monsieur Leforges, I had deferred on account of the necessity of removing William from Blois, then deferred again in the fear of his capture and in the unwieldy sorrow that I had felt on his leaving.

But now, upon the arrest of Paul and the resignation of his lawyer, I felt it all explode. I would not let these people, who had killed my father in their delirious rage, who had sent my beloved away in their delusional fear, and who had now arrested an honest and loving
père
de famille
out of their petty hysteria, rule our lives. It was anger that drove me by the graceful Louis XII fountain, which for three centuries had shimmered in the morning light. It was anger that led me into the small court that for half a millennium had been the entrance of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Laumer. And it was anger that made me snatch my pass back from a guard who seemed to sneer at me, as a visitor to a counter-revolutionary, and who, I thought, had no business being there himself, in front of gates that should lead one to a secluded world of the devoted and now ushered me into a common den of thieves. The new order, as I understood it, was none other than an excuse for brutes or the brutish-minded to bully the world. But it was a white-hot, controlled anger that carried me down the simple arcades between plain stone buildings—no sculpted arches and cloisters here; these Benedictines had renounced even beautiful architecture.

The irony of seeing an abbey used as a barracks for the National Guard and one of its buildings as a holding pen for prisoners seemed to crystallize for me all the priorities of the new order: military might and the politics of fear. Now that the patriot army had finally won a victory in Valmy, it had changed everything: we were now a world power, to be reckoned with. It made me sick. Where had all the quiet monks gone, who had once blessed these halls with meditation, work, and prayer? “Freed,” a young officer glibly told me, as he escorted me to a guard, who was to take me along another corridor. “The monks,” the officer enlightened me, “are now liberated from the torments of their lifelong vows.”