Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (51 page)

“Would you not say, Lieutenant”—the crowd quieted when I spoke, and I assumed an air of aplomb I could never have summoned up when he was my master—“that before you now is evidence that this Tear, real or not, can help ordinary citizens, and is it not the will of the Republic, Monsieur Leforges, to help all citizens with no regard to rank, just as the Holy Tear is oblivious to rich or poor, just heeding sincerity?” I glanced at Caroline, and she seemed fascinated by the crowd and by the figure with the red plume on his hat.

It gave me great satisfaction to render Monsieur Leforges speechless. I added, “An inscription on that vial reads, ‘The Holy Tear of Christ, wept on the tomb of Lazarus, brought from Constantinople by Geoffroy Martel, 1171.’ It is a healing tear. It is not the superstition, but the compassion, Monsieur, that you cannot understand.”

Gauchon approached me, but the crowd pressed around him and wouldn’t let him through. Monsieur Leforges stood on the fountain by his goddess. “Don’t listen to her. She’s a witch,” he finally said, resorting to superstition himself to sway the crowd, but his words trailed off when he saw their faces. He had pushed them too far. I always knew Monsieur Leforges was just words, that if he ever were required to show genuine courage, his panache would melt like butter in the sun on a summer’s day.

“Go back to Paris,” I heard one man cry, and a woman: “She has a baby; leave her alone”; and a third, “The Holy Tear of Vendôme!”

and that last cry was picked up by many of the others. It had been the old battle cry of the Vendôme knights. And upon hearing that complete rejection of his own authority, Lieutenant Leforges raised the vessel above his head, held it aloft a moment, and dashed it at his feet.

Some liquid poured out.

“Let it bring the stones back to life, if it can,” he said.

Monsieur Leforges caught the look of shock and dismay on my face and laughed. I was familiar with that laugh. That was his victory. Now he could leave the square with some dignity and go about collecting his rents. It hadn’t been an entirely successful morning for him.

And that was the last time I saw the man I had once wanted to marry.

The crowd rushed and shoved and knelt to touch the wet stones.

Some brushed their fingers across the dampness and held their fingers to their foreheads or lips or eyes. (The Tear had been supposed to be especially effective against eye disease.) Others tried to kiss the remains of moisture. Soon it was just dry stone and bits of shattered blue glass beneath a destroyed fountain, and the people left and went about their business, delayed so long by the man from Paris. And the Holy Tear of Vendôme went forever into legend.

When the crowd thinned, I saw Jeanne Robin, washing a blouse on the other side of the fountain from where the Goddess of the Republic, now ignored, still stood. My mission had been simply to observe, I thought. And I have made a spectacle of myself. When the last person had left the square, I walked up to Jeanne Robin rather sheepishly. “Ah, the Fearless Chouanne of Blois,” she said quietly. “The Institute, you know, prides itself on its
invisibility
. In this rests its success.”

“I am sorry, I—”

“You said you knew this man, Leforges?”

“Yes—”

“We all have personal animosities, Madame, but you must retain a
sang froid
or you are useless to the Institute. You can betray yourself, others, our cause, and revenge is
not
what we are here for.”

I felt embarrassed, holding a baby in my arms and being lectured by a woman the age of my younger sister. But she was completely right.

“We are here to help others, not ourselves. That is why it is a
Philanthropic
Institute. The marquis gave you our name?”

“Yes.”

“Now you
may
have compromised your mission, but it is possible that the lieutenant and the sans-culotte will only collect the rents, then give that collection to a third party. Then you can truly help, if you still want to and if you can keep your hot blood to yourself—”

“I am normally—”

“Oh, I respect your passion, Madame. Without it we would all be like those people in the square herded into taking a communion they didn’t believe in. And you were right about one thing.”

She paused and I waited. “You’ll have to change your looks. Here’s some things the marquis wants you to have—” She reached into her laundry basket and handed me a sack.

Caroline was getting fidgety in my arms. I put my foot up on the base of the fountain, rested her on my knee and opened the sack with one hand. The butt of a pistol showed beneath blonde curls. Now I will have two, I thought.

“Return to the café around four. Without the baby. We ’ll see who gets the collection, where he goes, and the marquis thinks you can come up with a creative way to divert the church rents—tithes from the people—back to the people.”

“I?”

“He seems to value your intelligence as well as your courage—”

“I didn’t plan that release from prison—” I whispered, even though no one was about.

“But you carried it out and didn’t lose your head when the boat was too far away to board.” This Jeanne Robin seemed to know everything. “Do you still want to help us, Madame?” she said.

I nodded.

“Your passion will serve you well,” Jeanne Robin said. “Just don’t go making fools out of old lovers who now are in the service of the patriot army.” She smiled.

I didn’t have anything to say.

“Get some rest and change your clothes. We might do some riding—but don’t bring your pretty horse to the square. Until this afternoon, Madame,” she said, and went back to her laundry.

At home in the cottage, when I inspected the contents of the sack, under the wig I also found a stiletto, for which, during the quiet of the afternoon, I embroidered a pocket on the left shoulder of my coat. I hoped the look of it would be intimidating enough. At the bottom of the sack I came upon a dark green velvet mask, with a note attached:

I hope you enjoy going, once again, to a fancy dress ball,

M R

On my walk back to the Café de Liberté, though, I felt concerned that this time I was out of my depth—it seemed that Jeanne Robin and the marquis played a game that was far more complex than the ones I had played—and even more dangerous.

Yet I was also glad to be doing something. During the day my many chores occupied me, but at night I’d lie awake and think of Marguerite and of her children in England. How tall was Gérard now? Did he talk of his aunt? Was Marie still doing her drawings?

Were they both learning English?

And William would wander into my thoughts, wearing different faces: the anguished face of the lover who doesn’t know the fate of his beloved; the eager face of the poet with new lines to share; the soft face of a man whom the world has not touched, singing me songs in the firelight. And with each face a different emotion would be summoned within me. I would try always to end with the soft face and even to hear his voice, but one is not always in control of one’s thoughts at night.

I lay open also, in the dark, to the finality of Etienne’s death. I would awake in a rage; or with the certain clarity of just having heard his voice in a dream; or lie there engulfed by the black hollowness that was my own room. Sometimes I would get up and light a candle and stand by Caroline’s crib watching her sleep and reminding myself in this way of life and of the love that I owed to it.

I could not do anything about my brother’s death. But I could do something of which, perhaps, he would be proud.

I entered the square a little before four and felt the strangeness of it again without the sound of the fountain. Jeanne Robin was nowhere to be seen. I was blonde now but also wore my three-cornered hat
à
la jockey
, my cloak, and boots. I looked as if I were going riding but I had no horse. La Rouge was now carefully kept in a stall that Jean helped us build, hidden in the back of the barn, past the goat pen and hen roost—
her
secret room—lest any officer felt the need to requisition her.

I sat at the Café de Liberté. Coffee was too expensive now, so I ordered a glass of cider and watched the square. I made the one glass last, and it was near five when I saw Citizen Gauchon lumber across the square from the direction of Saint-Nicolas church with a metal box in his hands, and hand it to another sans-culotte, identical looking though not as large, with a pipe stuck in his mouth and wearing a coat that looked too big for him.

A National Guardsman was at his side. At the same time I heard the rumble of a carriage entering the square and stopping in front of the café. The driver hopped off, talked with the second
sans-culotte
, and entered the café. I heard the driver complaining to the patron that he was going to have to miss his supper and drive this official and a guardsman to Bourges, and what could he have now, before he had to leave. I saw at least one other head in the shadow of the coach.

I wished Jeanne Robin were here. The marquis had asked me to steal this money for his institute. I had now accepted. I saw the first star come out and realized I had to make up my mind without Mademoiselle Robin. I paid for the cider and left, walking quickly back across the bridge to our cottage. I took a slice of bread and cheese for my supper and told Claudette that Jeanne hadn’t shown up, and that I was going on a ride into the forest to help the marquis’s Philanthropic Institute.

She then reminded me that I didn’t have to do this, that I was by myself, and I said I thought that I did have to do it and that it was easier and quieter by myself.

I tied my blonde hair back in a long queue, kissed Claudette, and didn’t say good-bye to Caroline, who was just waking up from a late nap, for I didn’t want seeing her to weaken my resolve.

It was in the barn that I truly felt that I had made the right decision: as soon as I heard La Rouge’s whinny as I approached the false back of the barn; as I carefully opened the door that looked as if it were just part of the old wall; as I saddled and talked to her; as I walked her out past the goat nipping at my sleeve; as I lifted myself onto the familiar saddle, tucking my leg in on Rouge’s left side, and as I felt the autumn dusk come whipping into my face and made for the road that would take us south, into the forests. At every step that led me on the mission I knew one thing: if I knew on what coach the
collection
was and where that coach was headed and I didn’t act, I would not be able to sit comfortably at home and work on Caroline’s winter suit. I would think that I had abdicated a responsibility I had taken on. I would think that my father would not approve of such an act. I would not approve of myself. I would want to be out here, riding into the dark.

And from the refugees I had talked to, I knew something of the plight of the people whom the Institute helped, of the violence to which their villages were subjected. Their stories filled me with horror and with repugnance for their tormentors, the Revolutionary Army from Paris, who saw the Vendéan villagers in the west as poisonous rebels who needed to be purged from the system of the new republic.

The colors of the changing woods glowed dimly, and I was reminded of evenings in another world, coming home from hunts with my father, looking forward to the big meal and the fire and the tangy taste of hard cider. The carriage was well ahead of us by now, and soon there was only the sound of Rouge’s hooves and the blur of the scented forest. And all the while I rode I was thinking.

We raced onto the old path, barely discernable now, uphill toward the lodge, and down again, across the stream, the meadow, and into the thicket where I had first heard the wild boar. But before the ravine we turned back along the dry streambed and followed its course to where it ran beside the road the carriage would take to Bourges.

There was still some light through the oaks, beeches, and chestnuts here, and I could see no recent wheel tracks in the dust. I dismounted and looked for any branches fallen in recent September winds or from the dryness of summer. I dragged one after another and laid them across the road. I worked fast, for I didn’t want the carriage to arrive when I was off in the forest. I made an adequate but not a big obstacle—with all the branches sticking up it seemed taller than it was—enough, I hoped, to spook a horse suddenly coming upon it in the dusk—and mounted La Rouge again and waited under the growing dark of the trees at the side of the road, where I donned the velvet mask.

I heard the sound of sixteen hooves, the roll of the wheels, and the rattle of a fast moving carriage slow down to make a sharp turn and saw the lead horses balk at the knee-high pile of branches and heard the curse of the driver and the jostling as he stepped down to the road. He continued to curse as he cleared the branches. The guardsman stepped down after him and walked to the side of the road. He grasped his musket and peered into the dark forest looming around him. He was on my side of the carriage, or I could have quickly poked my head into the coach and pointed my pistol at the sans-culotte.

As it was, I urged Rouge forward and knocked the guardsman down before he saw us coming. I pointed one pistol at him, and with my left hand tucked the reins under my leg and reached for the other pistol in my coat.

“The Chouans welcome you to the Forest of Boulogne,” I said to the guardsman and the driver. “Leave the musket on the ground.”

The guardsman stood up. “Both of you, clasp your hands behind your heads, now.”

I had a pistol in each hand now and nudged Rouge with my leg to the door of the carriage. “I believe a citizen wearing a red cap is within. Will he please come out here, and anyone else who is in the carriage. And Citizen, please do not forget your metal box. Come now. I would be glad to shoot through the window of the carriage to encourage your haste.”

The sans-culotte, clutching his box, and a young, pretty woman in a dark blue cloak stepped down from the carriage. “You’re a woman,” she said.

“And so are you,” I said. “Put the box in this saddlebag, Citizen, slowly.” I kept a pistol pointed at his head as he did so. “Very good.