Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (31 page)

“They would only want Paul and me. Don’t—”

“Why are you doing this, Annette? I love you so, for your courage, but you don’t have to. You don’t have to do it.”

“We only have a short period of time. As you said, Duclos is no help. And I’m the one who thought up the stupid plan.”

She laughed a little. “How do soldiers ever sleep the night before a battle?”

“I don’t think they do. I think they lie awake and talk around their campfires or stare into the flames.”

“What do they talk about?”

“Home. Loved ones. Not the next day.”

“Do you remember, Annette, when we used to lie under a blanket, like this, and talk away summer nights, talk till dawn about boys, or some prince—”

“You were always going to some castle.”

“Chez Vincent is my château on the hill,” she said. “I got all I wanted.” I held her hand under the blanket. “Gérard’s fifth birthday is coming up,” she added. “He was asking me about it today, and I almost burst out crying, right in front of him, talking about his birthday.”

“He’s always wanted to see the Channel. He’s heard about it.

Huge waves and ships. It will be exciting.”

“It will be that.”

I felt all right now. As I sat and talked with my sister about it, somehow my fear and self-doubt had dropped away, and a peculiar calmness had taken their place. Everything looked clearer than I had ever seen it, as if I had suddenly awoken from a long slumber and was seeing my sister’s face in the moonlight, the river in the distance, for the first time. “Look at the moon, Annette,” Marguerite said. “Look at the moon on the vineyard of chez Vincent.” And it lay now, as it sunk westward, in a sheen over the vines and on the river.

“Doesn’t the sheen look solid on the river?” I said. “Like ice, as if one could just walk right across. Why not?”

We held hands silently and looked over that land that was still hers.

“Thank you, Annette,” she said. “Thank you for what you are doing for us.”

“Roses,” I said. “The English are fond of roses, and so is Marie.

I think she will become a great painter of English roses. Gérard will become a sailor, an admiral of the British fleet.”

“Oh, no. Let’s not get involved in any more wars,” she said, and leaned her head against my shoulder. “Jean’s a good driver, yes?”

“He’s very reliable.”

“It’s just so irrevocable. That’s all,” she said. “So irrevocable—like a death, a marriage, a birth. The church should have ceremonies for leaving a home and leaving one’s country, as they do for the other irrevocable steps of life.”

“I’m afraid such ceremonies would be called counter-revolutionary,” I said.

“Well, I’d do them anyway,” Marguerite said, sleepily. I didn’t say anything, and soon heard her regular breathing beside me. I looked a bit longer at the moon dipping into clouds above the river, and when the moon had gone fully into them, I led my sister, sleepwalking and not really awake, to her bed, and I went back to my room, dressed, lay on my own bed and noticed all my doubts and fears still playing about my mind, yet underneath feeling calm and ready.

I thought, I should turn back right now, before I do anything truly foolish. Marguerite would understand. So would Paul. Nothing would be lost if I turned back right now. Yet I knew I would do nothing of the sort. I wouldn’t knock on the ceiling of the carriage to tell Jean to stop. It was all in motion, after all. And it was, of course, foolish. But sometimes wild, foolish plans work.

We were across the bridge now and going along the quai Abbé, lively with early-morning business: wagons filled with grain and barrels of wine, carts loaded with sacks of sugar and coffee, just upriver from Nantes; bargemen calling and carrying and hauling. We must have seemed incongruous in this traffic. Farmers unloaded hay bales and herded livestock onto
sapines
, broad fir-planked barges with no sails, headed downriver. Two large
gabares
with their beautiful tall sails were docked on their way to Orléans. I thought briefly of the quai at Orléans, where I had walked with William. Where was William now? Then I saw the road we would turn on to drive by the abbey.

It was suddenly silent and deserted. We passed by guards in a small court at the south entrance of the abbey. I could feel them staring at us, even in our small, plain carriage. Any carriage now, betokening aristocracy, raised suspicions. I thought one of the guards caught my eye. He looked young, about Etienne’s age. But they were at their posts and could not see the carriage once it was past the courtyard.

The abbey had a thirteenth-century wall, built to keep intruders out rather than the devout in. Its thick, chipped limestone, about ten feet high, followed the monastic buildings. The ancient wall was on our left. We were the only vehicle on the road, and the crunching of the wheels on the gravel was louder than I had anticipated. I thought one could hear it all the way back to the château de Blois.

About halfway between the south and north entrances, we stopped as planned, and I leaned out of the window and asked Jean what was the matter. I wondered if the guards had heard the stopping of the carriage, this far down the road. Jean said that Gascony, the lead horse, appeared to have picked up a stone in its hoof, and I said I wanted to see. Jean helped me out of the carriage, the basket over my arm. I checked my clock, and it was five minutes until seven. I looked up and down the road. Two empty wagons, heading toward the quai, trundled well ahead of us. Jean cradled the back hoof of Gascony in his large callused hand for me to examine; Gascony looked around at us, swiveling his ears in curiosity, wondering what we were about.

The problem with plans, simple or complex, is that something always happens to interrupt them. We were out of sight of the guards, but apparently not out of hearing.

Out from the court, walking quickly, came one of the guards. He shouted, “Is something wrong?” I saw that it was the young one, who had caught my eye. “I heard your carriage stop,” he said. “May I aid you in some way?”

“That is good of you, but it is nothing. My coachman can take care of it.”

He looked disappointed. He knelt by the horse and looked at the shoe, then the ankle, and he looked up at me. “But I can see nothing wrong,” he said, in a tone more surprised than suspicious. Perhaps he
was
suspicious, but he didn’t want to admit it, even to himself. He wanted to help.

“It is probably nothing, then, as I thought,” I said.

He straightened up. It must be seven by now. “Then you will be all right. Let me help you back into the carriage.” He looked at the basket. “You are going to market? So early?” The clock tower was striking seven.

“The best vegetables are to be had early.”

“That is true. But a lady like you does the buying for the house?”

“We are all citizens now.”

“That is true.” He stood there looking at me with his eager face.

Just then the other guard appeared around the corner. “Arnaut!

You imbecile! You leave your post, and you will lose your head.”

“My friend, he always exaggerates,” Arnaut said.

“You have been very kind.”

I allowed him to help me back into the carriage, then he ran down the road and turned into the court. Jean helped me step out again. In the basket, underneath a baby’s pink knit hat and my ivory needles, a white cloth covered the rope. I took the rope out and quickly threw it over the wall, but my arm was not strong enough, and it fell in coils at my feet. I threw it again, and it glanced off the top of the wall. I did not think this was going to be so difficult. I had to ask Jean. Jean looked down and thought about it.

“Please, Jean, we don’t have time to think.”

In my anger, I heaved the rope over the top. Then I grabbed my end and gave it to Jean. He stood there with it in his hands.

“Tie it to the luggage railing. As we practiced.” When I had asked Jean to help and told him it would be dangerous, he had been eager for the adventure. He had always been dependable. Now he seemed frozen with fear. “Do it!” I said, as loudly as I dared.

Suddenly he woke out of his trance and tied the rope quickly to

the railing above my head. I saw the rope suddenly grow taut, heard shoes scrabbling against the stones on the other side, then the rope went slack again, and a weight dropped to the ground. I looked up the street, and there was a flower woman, on the other side, carrying two baskets of violets and roses and broad lilies toward Louis XII Square.

A voice shouted roughly, “Hurry up. Your time is up in there.”

Then I saw the rope tighten. It stayed taut, the shoes clicked again against the wall, I heard some labored breathing, then I saw the top of Paul’s head above the wall. I looked at the flower woman, who had passed the carriage, and she was looking straight ahead. Paul’s shoulders appeared, then, with a mammoth effort, he pulled himself up and over the wall and slid down the rope. He held out his shaking hands; the rope had skinned his palms.

“Untie it!” I hissed at Jean, for the railing was out of my reach.

Jean did so, and we left the rope dangling there. Paul gave me his raw hand to help me into the carriage.

He looked at me briefly: it was a look I was later to become familiar with in others, one of resoluteness, in spite of fear. Even with his bruises, his face seemed as white as could be. But his eyes were steady, and he managed a slight smile. It was a smile of a minor victory, of the success of a first assault. He said softly, Thank you, and I handed him a spare set of Jean’s clothes, including worn boots and hat, and turned to the window.

I could see Louis XII Square just ahead, and as we got closer, I saw the sun catching the ornate fountain on the far side. The square was already filling up now with carts and even a few carriages entering it, shop people setting up their wares and others intent on doing the early, best marketing.

Paul handed me his clothes and shrugged. Though he and Jean were about the same height, Paul was much more slender and swam in the breeches and shirt. I smiled and curled Paul’s old clothes into a ball and dropped them out the window and under the wheels of a cart behind us. I glanced at my watch; we were doing well. I tapped on the ceiling, and Jean pulled to the side of the road and stopped. I told Paul he was obliged to drive now, and he nodded, got out quickly and climbed up to the driver’s seat as Jean jumped off and mixed immediately with the others going into market. He ’d walk home unnoticed up the hill to chez Vergez. Paul snapped the reins over the back of the horses, and we rode on.

We were about to enter the square, and I could see from here a gleaming mound of red tomatoes, greens of cabbage and lettuce and courgettes piled high, plump yellow squash, pears and apples, and the shining silver of fresh fish laid out in rows. Bright silk and cloth ribbons for sale swung in the breeze, and the smell of fresh bread reached me. The man selling used coats and gowns of those who had emigrated or been imprisoned called out the glories of their silk and lace and velvet and their cheap prices. If we could just enter all that teeming life, I thought, and I could even buy some bread for the trip to make our presence credible, then we could be out the other side by the fountain, across the bridge, and on our way.

Just then four horsemen in the blue-and-white uniform of the National Guard, swords rattling at their sides and hooves pounding between crowded carts, tore into the Wednesday-morning life of the square. Soon came the tramp of about twenty soldiers marching up from the abbey. They cut a swath through the marketers, some setting up position at the end of the square, near the fountain, and others poking carts and investigating wagons already in the square. Even disguised as my driver, I didn’t want Paul scrutinized; perhaps one of the prison guards who knew him was among those troops.

I shouted up to Paul, “Jean, take us around by Saint-Nicolas. Now.

I want to pray.” And Paul turned on rue Saint-Lubin, and we headed back toward the church, on the other side of the abbey.

We passed outside the long nave of the ancient church, and I breathed deeply and thought that, somehow, I had got along without breathing much since I had first tried to throw the rope over the wall. About six National Guardsmen stood at the intersection of our road and the entrance into the courtyard in front of the church. An officer looked at Paul, with Jean’s hat pulled down over his eyes, and motioned for him to stop. The officer came up to my window. “What is your business?”

“I am on my way to the church.”

“On what business?” he repeated.

“To pray.”

He grunted and said, “I need to look inside.”

I opened the door for the officer, and he looked in at the small, empty interior. He patted both seats and even knocked on the wood beneath them. Then his eyes fell on the basket. “Open it.”

I lifted it to him, and he drew away the white cloth. “A cap I am knitting for my unborn child. I am going to pray for the child now. I have not been well.” The officer glanced down at my protruding belly and motioned for us to pass.

“On to the church, Jean,” I said, for I was not sure if Paul had heard the conversation. Then, before we could leave, the officer stopped us again.

His face was at my window. He looked tired and bored, idly curious. “Your coachman, he has a bruised face.”

“So would you if you had a wife like mine,” said Paul, in a coarse voice. The officer stepped back and gazed at him.

“She is a cat. She could smell another woman on me and took a candlestick to me.”

“Why don’t you join the army?” said the officer. “Go and fight the Austrians.”

He motioned us on again, and we drove into the court before the church and stopped. Paul came around to help me out.

“I want you to come in with me,” I said.

He went before me and opened the great four-hundred-year-old door, then followed me in. It was cool and dim, and I noticed for the first time that my mouth was very dry. I felt as if I was suffocating. I tried to swallow, but could not. I turned back and walked down the long south aisle of the nave to the font of holy water near the entrance, dipped my palm in, and lifted it to my mouth. No one saw this blasphemy except Paul, and I repeated it twice.