Mistress of the Revolution (12 page)

“I will soon need a nursery maid as well,” I said. “With your permission, Sir, I will hire both.”

A smile lit his face. “Gabrielle, dearest, you are a good girl.”

Monsieur de Laubrac, my husband’s cousin, never acknowledged me more than required by common politeness, and sometimes rather less. Since my pregnancy had been announced, he would cast furtive, unfriendly glances at my stomach. Early in the spring of 1785, he braved a fresh coat of snow to introduce his bride, a stout, loud, pockmarked widow of inferior birth, endowed with a fortune of 60,000 francs. That kind of marriage where an impoverished scion of the nobility wedded a woman for her money was called in French
fumer ses terres
, which can be translated by “spreading manure upon one’s estate.”

Although I experienced little discomfort throughout my pregnancy, the weather became hot and my back began to ache under the weight of my stomach. I often thought of the late Baroness’s untimely death in childbirth and wondered whether I would meet the same fate.

Early in the morning of the 15th of August 1785, one year to the day after first meeting the Baron, I felt the first pangs of childbirth. The pain, from dull, became close to unbearable. In spite of the midwife’s assurances that all was well, I was convinced that my body was splitting apart and that I would not survive my lying-in. At last I had the relief of hearing, in the late afternoon, the first cry of my child.

“Oh, Madam,” announced the midwife, “it’s a beautiful little girl. I’d be surprised if she didn’t weigh a full nine pounds. Who would have guessed it, with Your Ladyship being so young and slender!”

My heart sank, but my daughter was so pretty that she consoled me as soon as she was handed to me, all bundled up. She had dark blue eyes and the thickest head of black hair I have ever seen in an infant. The maids marveled at her resemblance with me, apart from her colouring. She was perfectly finished, down to the nails of her tiny fingers, which grasped mine with surprising strength.

I dreaded meeting my husband’s eye. No one had mustered the courage to break the news to him. I was sitting in bed, holding my child as a shield when he entered my apartment with an eager look. I closed my eyes for a moment and said a silent prayer. My fears were unfounded. His face fell when I made my announcement, but he raised neither his hand nor his voice. With his forefinger, he pulled the white blanket in which our daughter was swaddled away from her face and glanced at her.

“Well,” he said, “at least she seems healthy enough, which is a good sign for the others to come. I guess it is not your fault, my dear. Just rest and regain your strength. We will try again soon.”

He kissed me on the forehead and left without a second look at our child.

Before giving birth, I had convinced him to allow me to nurse my child. It was less due to the influence of Rousseau’s ideas on the question than to the fact that I could not imagine giving it up to a strange woman for years, as my mother had done with me. The Baron had reluctantly agreed on principle but had reserved the right to curtail what he considered a whim to any term he deemed appropriate. Nursing would of course interfere with my ability to become pregnant again. At the time, many ladies of the nobility bore more children than peasant women because they married far younger and did not feed their own offspring. The fact that I had borne a female was likely to shorten the period during which I would be allowed to nurse. Now that I was holding my daughter in my arms, parting with her seemed unthinkable. My aim was to continue feeding her until she could be weaned or was old enough to drink cow’s milk.

It remained to name my daughter. I had spent hours thinking of names during my pregnancy, but I had not dared mention to the Baron any that were suitable for a girl.

“What about
Aimée
?” I suggested. “It is the female form of your second Christian name.”

“And a ridiculous one for a grown man. But it was my mother’s name, and it will do for a girl. Call her whatever you like.”

Aimée
means “beloved” in French. In happier days, Pierre-André had called me
mon aimée
, “my beloved.” It had been a year since I had seen him. During that time, I had married and become a mother. The ideas of love or romance I had once entertained had succumbed on my wedding night. However, in a part of my memory I dared not revisit, a faint echo of past feelings survived. So my little girl was christened Aimée Françoise Marie de Laubrac de Peyre. I called her simply Aimée, to remember that I too had once been beloved. My brother was her godfather and Mademoiselle de Carlat, an elderly maiden aunt of my husband’s, her godmother.

“The old sow is rich,” the Baron explained, “and we might as well induce her to leave something to the child. I do not believe that daughters should expect to inherit much from their fathers. It is enough of a nuisance to raise them and marry them off. Hopefully this one will be pretty like you. Some fool will fall in love with her and take her without a
sol
.”

I agreed readily to the Baron’s choice since I did not want my mother, the Marquise de Castel, to be the godmother. It would have seemed bad luck to let her, like a wicked fairy, approach my little girl’s cradle.

I had naively imagined that, immediately after giving birth, I would feel and look exactly as I had before my pregnancy. I was surprised to be sore, and horrified, when I rose the next day, to see that my waist had thickened and my stomach looked very strange indeed, as if my skin was now too large for my body. The midwife laughed at me when I asked about it.

“What did Your Ladyship expect?” she asked. “It will be another few days before you feel fine, and you will not get your figure back for weeks or even months, maybe not before your next pregnancy. My Lord must be impatient to father an heir and I would not be surprised if you were again with child before long.”

Within three weeks, I was happy to observe that my waist and stomach had returned to their usual proportions.

“You are as slender as ever,” my husband remarked, looking down at my kerchief. “Except for your bosom, of course, and I have no complaints about that. Send for that fool of a midwife. You must be fit to resume your duties now.”

The midwife concurred. When he grasped me that night, I felt as if a knife were plunged into an open wound. Yet I bore the pain without a whimper or a word of protest, afraid that my little girl would be taken away from me if I angered him by my reluctance. I would have endured much worse to keep her with me. She was thriving and outgrew one set of baby linens after the other. I would hold her for hours, rocking her in my arms and singing to her, while her dark blue eyes remained fixed on my face.

My former maid Thérèse also gave birth to the Baron’s offspring. I called on her after she was delivered of a large, healthy boy. Blushing, she asked me whether I would do her the honour of becoming the child’s godmother. I agreed. As long as I remained in Auvergne, I followed little Gabriel’s progress. I sometimes wondered how many other bastards of the Baron populated the surrounding countryside, unacknowledged and unheeded by their father.

One dark and snowy November afternoon, my husband came to my apartment while I was feeding Aimée. He seldom visited there during the day except to use the dressing room with the maids. I moved to rise and curtsey, my daughter in my arms, but he gestured to me to remain seated. He watched us in silence. Aimée’s eyes were slowly closing. The movements of her mouth were becoming lazier. After she dozed off, still clutching my breast with her tiny hands, I gently put her down in the lace-draped cradle where generations of little Peyres had slumbered.

“She is growing like a weed,” remarked the Baron. “I am sure that she can be weaned. If not, find her a nurse. What a notion for a noblewoman to feed her own child!” He was staring at my bare breasts. “I have to admit, though, that it does enhance the size of your bosom.”

I blushed and began to readjust my bodice. He caught both of my wrists to draw me to him. “Stay as you are, my dear. Let us lie down for a minute.”

He led me to the couch. As always, he did, and made me do, what he wanted. Once satisfied, he rose and proceeded to button his breeches and waistcoat. I seized his hand and kissed it.

“Please, Sir,” I said, “let me continue to feed our daughter. I beg you. Just for a few weeks longer.”

He frowned. “Have you not heard what I said? I have shown much patience with you. We have been married for over a year now, Madam, and you are still giving no sign of presenting me with an heir. You will put an end tomorrow to this nonsense.”

I closed my eyes and made no answer.

In anticipation of his decision, which I had been dreading for some weeks, I had begun to introduce into Aimée’s diet, much to her annoyance, gruel made from cow’s milk. I found a peasant woman nearby who had a boy of the same age and agreed to come to Cénac during the day. I watched, with feelings of bitter jealousy, my daughter root for her breast instead of mine. Aimée was apparently healthy enough to become accustomed to this regimen without any ill effects.

By January of 1786, two months later, I was with child again. I was afraid of bearing another girl. The Baron made no effort to hide his misgivings. We never regained the hopeful feelings of my first pregnancy.

One afternoon in late July, I felt a sharp pain low in my back and was taken to bed. I was only six months along. The midwife kept repeating, a terrified look on her face:

“Don’t worry, My Lady, you’ll be fine.”

“What about my child?” I asked between two pangs. “Is it going to be stillborn?”

“It’ll be fine too. Just don’t worry.”

Her assurances sounded hollow, and I knew that my husband would blame me if anything went wrong. All of a sudden, I heard through the closed door his voice yelling oaths. He had come home earlier than expected and must have been informed that I had gone into labour. He burst into my apartment, booted and still holding his riding whip. My heart stopped for a moment, then started beating so fast that my chest felt ready to burst. I had been until then only moaning, but began crying aloud, not in pain but in terror. The midwife, although she had the good fortune not to be married to him, joined her screams to mine.

“Bitch,” he shouted, glaring at me, “what have you done?”

He was advancing fast towards me. Never before, not even during my wedding night, had I been so afraid of him. I gathered my remaining strength to rise and run away, but with one hand he caught me by the shoulder while he raised his whip with the other. Blows were raining on my arms, my breasts, my stomach. I felt something warm gushing between my thighs. I fainted.

I came to my senses too late to see my son alive. The midwife had baptized him in haste so that the poor innocent could attain eternal salvation. It tore my heart to behold the tiny body, so frail, so raw. I mourned that child, whose white coffin had to be pried from my arms for burial. I was not recovered enough to attend his funeral.

The Baron was content afterwards to look at me in a resentful and malevolent manner. I was pronounced fit to resume my duties even sooner than after the birth of Aimée. Yet I failed to become pregnant. I was terrified of having become barren.

After our son’s death, the Baron returned to the cruelties he had inflicted at the beginning of our marriage. My heart would still skip a beat at the signs of his anger, but once I was past the first lash, I knew how to detach myself from my own body. As to his other attentions, they no longer repelled me. I did everything he required of me and simply waited for the proceedings to be over. Any resistance, which he would have overcome without difficulty, would only have increased his pleasure and my misery.

Many times did I watch, from the window of my bedroom, the Baron mount his horse in the courtyard and ride away. I bit my lips with envy, remembering his injunction not to approach within a hundred feet of the stables. I knew that it was meant to be taken literally and that any disobedience would be reported by the servants. I sighed as I recalled the happy days of my girlhood, when I was free to ride Jewel into the mountains. That would never be again. I was careful not to indulge in any hopes of a change.

Yet my life was not without its consolations. I had my little girl, who was now past her first birthday. Her eyes were no longer blue, but had turned dark like her father’s. Apart from her black hair, she still very much resembled me. She had learned to walk by holding fast to my skirts, and could now say not only “Mama” but also “want” while pointing at the object of her desires. I had presented her with my old rag doll, which she called “Nana” and dragged everywhere. I mended the poor thing, now discoloured and threadbare, over and over again. I even sewed a replacement for it, but Aimée steadfastly refused to even look at the new doll.

Whenever I played the harpsichord, Aimée would listen with rapt attention, propped against the bench. After I was done, I sat her on my lap and guided her tiny forefinger on the keys to produce simple melodies. She giggled in delight while I kissed her dark curls and praised her musical skills.

I found more solace than ever in the little library. Reading about the trials of others made me forget mine. Tales, real or imaginary, of faraway lands made my seclusion in Cénac bearable.

The 17th of March 1787 witnessed one of those momentous turns in the course of my life. Around midmorning, while I was reading in my apartment, I heard Maryssou howling, which very much surprised me for she was not given to venting her feelings. My chambermaid, out of breath, burst into the room without knocking.

“Oh, Madam,” she said, “a great misfortune had happened. My Lord’s been taken ill.”

I ran downstairs and saw four peasants carrying a sort of door on which lay my husband. They gently put it down in the vestibule. I cried aloud, took his hand, which was already cold, and looked into his face. His eyes and mouth half-closed, he looked very much as he had done that night when he had fallen asleep in my bed, except for a small cut across the bridge of his nose. In a moment I understood that I was a widow.

I felt no sorrow. Many times during my marriage I had reflected that death only could release me from my servitude, but I had always thought of mine, not his. My first feeling was one of astonishment and shock rather than relief. All of my waking hours had been occupied by the dread of his reactions. Now he was gone, I was free, and I was lost. The only person whose help I could think of enlisting was my brother. I scrawled a note and asked a manservant to deliver it to Fontfreyde. I waited in the parlour, pacing the room.

Shortly after noon, I heard the sound of hooves on the gravel in the courtyard. I ran outside. It was the Marquis. His horse was covered with sweat. I fell into his arms, sobbing. He took me back to the house.

“Gabrielle, what is the matter? I could not make any sense of your note. I rode like hell to find out what is ailing you.”

“The Baron is dead. Oh, Sir, I am a widow now.”

“Poor child, what a blow this must be.”

He called to a servant for a glass of wine, which he made me drink. It steadied me. I was able to sit still.

“Now tell me about it, Gabrielle. How did this happen?”

“He went hunting early this morning, as usual. Baduel, the tenant of the Bousquet farm, found him lying in the snow. He was apparently already dead. This is so sudden. He seemed in excellent health.”

“Well, dearest, he indulged in many excesses. The less said about it, the better, I guess.”

I grasped his hands. “If you do not help me, Sir, I do not know what will become of my little girl and me. I cannot spend the night here. Please take us back with you to Fontfreyde.”

“Be brave, Gabrielle. As his widow, you will wake your husband. His corpse cannot be left unattended. You must spend the first night in prayers by his side.”

The idea of spending the night in the Baron’s bedroom, where I had never entered, in the company of his dead body, was more than I could bear.

“I have never sat with the dead before. Please, Sir, stay with me tonight.”

“If you wish, little sister. Please calm yourself.”

The Marquis sent word to Carrier, the Baron’s attorney, and had a physician and a priest fetched. He went in search of Maryssou, whom he found sobbing in the kitchen. Under his direction, she had the body of the Baron dressed properly and laid on his bed.

Dr. Roussille, after acknowledging my husband’s demise, which he assured me had been due to a sudden rupture of the heart, handed me a vial of medicine.

“Take this in a cup of herb tea, My Lady,” he said. “It is laudanum and will quiet you.”

I sat to dinner with my brother, and we went to the Baron’s bedroom, where he lay, dressed in his finest clothes. A rosary, which I had never seen him use during his life, had been placed in his hands. Two candles were burning on the nightstand, where Father Vidal had left a basin of holy water with instructions to sprinkle the body from time to time. My brother and I each took a chair by the side of the bed. I could not take my eyes off the thing that had been my husband. I imagined that I saw him stirring. If I stopped watching him for a moment, he would rise from the dead to beat me again.

The Marquis, glancing at me, rang for a cup of lime-blossom tea. He poured all the contents of Dr. Roussille’s medicine in it and made me drink it. It tasted sweet and strong, like liquor. Within minutes I became dizzy. I was dreaming awake. Wolves with human faces were watching me, and sometimes they came frighteningly close to me. I cried aloud to my brother. He took me in his arms, carried me to a couch in front of the fireplace, lay me down and removed my shoes. He sat next to me and held my feet in his hands. He was talking while caressing my ankles, but I could not understand what he was telling me, as if he had been speaking a foreign language. I needed to hear his voice. It kept the eerie visions from closing upon me. It lulled me to sleep. I fell into a pit of oblivion.

When I woke and raised myself on one elbow, my brother was opening the inside shutters and the grey light of dawn could be glimpsed beyond the woods. Smiling, he walked up to me and ran his fingers on my cheek.

“So, my love,” he asked, “are you better this morning?”

I seized his hand. “Please do not leave yet.”

“Of course not, little sister.”

The Marquis remained another day and night at Cénac.