Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (23 page)

The young men of Europe began to kill each other by the thousands, and life grew within me.

Captain Beaupuy was all the time training his regiment for the front, and William was alone in the
Amis de la Constitution
club. He, a foreigner, was speaking out for France now to keep to its constitution, even in times of war and fear of counter-revolution at home. The constitution would limit the power of one seeking to curb all possible counter-revolution in the quickest possible ways.

It was my birthday in June, and we had stayed off politics for the day.

I was turning twenty-three; William had turned twenty-two in April.

He had caught and fried two trout from the river this afternoon, and we were eating our supper now along the banks. The trout was flaky and crisp, and I licked my fingers. William had made a present of four new lines that he had translated, which, he said, spoke “of a peace felt high in the mountains, a peace not usually found in the world,” but that preface itself implied what we were avoiding.

And sure there is a secret Power that reigns

Here, where no trace of man the spot profanes.

How still! No irreligious sound or sight

Rouses the soul from her serene delight.

All the while the river flowed by us, just lapping a bit on the banks.

“I’ve never felt such ease before with anyone,” he said. “With my sister I could feel contentment, but she ’d be writing in her notebook,” he said and laughed, “trying to get it all down. With you—we can just listen to the river—that’s all.” He stretched out on the bank with his head in my lap, and I stroked his forehead. “How can anyone deserve this much happiness?”

“We do,” I said. But even as I said it, I thought of him leaving. A part of me wanted this pregnancy to last and last, for after it I knew William would have to go. I tried to hold on to each passing moment that slipped quickly by us like the water at our feet.

“Do you see that spiderweb there, between those branches?” I pointed to it.

“I would have missed that,” he said, “I would have missed the shining. What is that from?”

“From the spray of the river, landing on the web and catching the light.”

“No one sees things as you do.”

“You do,” I said.

William was washing the pan now with the fine gravel on the banks.

“Did you hear about General Dillon?” he said. Had he forgotten that we were going to try to keep away from politics, just for today?

“What about him?” I said.

“What the troops of the glorious Patriot Army did to him.”

I had just heard that the army had panicked and run at its first encounter with the Austrians. When I didn’t answer, William continued.

“In the Austrian Netherlands,” he said. He was rubbing gravel hard against the pan. “When the army withdrew, they hanged their own general. Then—pardon me—they took parts of him and paraded them through the streets and burned them on a bonfire. What kind of savages do that?”

I felt slightly ill. The water glittered in the shallows at William’s feet, and he had to squint to look at me. “There’s something wrong, Annette,” he said. “There’s something going wrong with the Revolution. One can even feel it at the Friends of the Constitution club. Our name has become ironic. The Mountain Men, or the Jacobins, as they are also called, are gaining far too much power. Robespierre’s ambition is boundless. The power the Jacobins want goes against the constitution, so they simply dissolved the Constitutional Guard, which checks abuses. They said it was polluted by having too many ex-aristocrats on it. Yet the Jacobins have ex-aristocrats among them.” He was rinsing out the pan, which had been clean for several minutes now. “And they’ve started deporting priests again who won’t swear allegiance to the new government—refractory priests, they’re called. I’m no priest lover, but—leave them alone.” He put the pan in the rucksack.

“What about that friend of yours in the Assembly—Brissot?”

“The Jacobins don’t like him,” William said, “him and his friends—called the Girondins, for they’re mostly from Bordeaux and the Gironde. The Jacobins think the Girondins are too moderate, even accuse them of being on the side of the counter-revolution. It’s ridiculous. The Jacobins just want all the power. And they’re willing to do anything for it. And they do it all in the name of national security. There is no more brotherhood in Paris, no more embracing each other as brothers in freedom.”

William packed the pan in the rucksack, gave me his hand, and we began our walk back up the hill. “That’s why I wrote that essay,” he said, “to support the constitution against the Jacobins’ abuses. We can’t give up.” He stopped, gripped my hand, and looked at me hard, his blue eyes fierce. “We can’t give up on anything, Annette.”

That was my twenty-third birthday. We couldn’t keep off politics if we tried. It was all around us, and the world was being changed by it.

One could hate politics, but one couldn’t ignore it.

At Maman’s and Vergez’s last dinner visit, I let her know that, to be more readily available to tutor Gérard and Marie, I was staying indefinitely at chez Vincent. Maman said, Well, if you’re not going to have a family of your own, at least you can help others who have. You’ll save Marguerite money on tutors. I think Monsieur Vergez liked the idea of me not being in the house.

Etienne was home now from the university, and he and Angelique came to visit us at chez Vincent. I saw him from the doorway of the salon, hair grown long, neckcloth carelessly tied, English jockey boots unpolished, striped waistcoat and blue frock coat looking as if they had not been pressed in a year, a glass of wine in his hand. I wanted to embrace him, but even with my loose gown I was beginning to show, and I wanted somehow to explain things first. I had not seen Angelique since the last dinner with Maman, and she didn’t know either. I entered the room and sat behind a writing desk near the door. The Vincents’ old family servant, Pierre, brought me a glass of water. He knew that is what I preferred. “There she is,” Etienne said.

“There’s the recalcitrant sister.”

Angelique sat by his side on the sofa with the gilt lion’s feet. She had on a white linen summer gown, as I had, but wore a pale blue sash around her waist and a blue scarf knotted in the form of a cap on her blond curls. She looked fresh and cool, and she, too, had a glass.

They had been laughing about something when I came in. “Maman says she has not seen you in over a month,” Etienne went on. “And Angelique said she herself did not see you even for your birthday. It’s now the end of June. What have you to say for yourself, Mademoiselle l’Abbesse?”

“Hardly,” I said, “Mademoiselle l’Abbesse.”

“She’s been playing with and tutoring your niece and nephew every day,” Marguerite said, and shifted a bowl of fruit in front of her.

“And walking with that Englishman,” said Angelique. “Your friend Isabelle’s mother came to visit and said she saw you, Marguerite, a stranger, and an army captain walking by the bridge. You can’t fool us. Etienne and I know you’re staying here because Marguerite has a soft spot for you, and you can visit your Englishman. You told me at Easter he had followed you here from Orléans. I think it’s quite exciting. Vergez says he forbade you to see the foreigner. So good for you, I say. Etienne and I are proud of you.”

“Well, after that speech I have some interesting news for you two,” I said. “
That Englishman
and I are to be wed.” That produced gasps from Angelique and silence from Etienne. But before they could say anything, I said, “And I trust you find being an aunt and an uncle charming, for—” I stood up. I put my hand on my belly. “This is in the strictest confidence, for I trust you as friends, not just as brother and sister. Maman—and certainly Vergez—are not to know. I’ll choose my own time about that—”

Etienne coughed on his wine. Angelique ran up to me. “You horrid person,” she said, “for not letting me know.” And she turned on Marguerite. “Why am I always left in the dark?” Then she kissed me. She took my hand and led me to their couch. “I told you in Orléans,” she said, “that I would support you against the world that misunderstands you—”

“No world misunderstands me,” I said. “But thank you.”

“Maman, though,” Angelique said, “And Vergez. You’ll know what they’ll want. They’ll feel that you have irretrievably shamed the family and for you to see out your confinement out of Blois—somewhere convenient like Orléans. What are you going to do? Hide out here until—”

“December,” I said.

“Or is the Englishman taking you away from us?” Etienne said.

“Are you going to become an English wife?”

“Monsieur William is going first,” I said, “after the baby is born—then...well, perhaps we can stay here, I hope. William will secure means, and—”

“Foreigners aren’t exactly the most popular people in France, now,” he said.

“He’s sent an essay to
La Patriote Française
,” I said. “He has friends.”

“But are they the right friends?” Etienne said. “Among certain powerful people, like Robespierre, Brissot and his paper are about as popular as foreigners.”

“Will you go to England?” Angelique said.

I was between them on the sofa. They were right to barrage me with questions. I should not have kept them in the dark so long. They were right to be alarmed. It was hardly the best of situations.

“He’s a poet,” Etienne said. “That’s a respectable profession—for a gentleman. His family has means, then—” My little brother was worried about me.

“He has uncles who have means,” I said, “and a lord who owns much of the north of England who owes his family money—”

“Well, he can’t count on that,” Etienne said.

“I think you’ve got yourself in a mess again, Annette, but we love you,” Angelique said.

“Again?” Etienne said.

Angelique ignored that. “We just have to keep our mother, stepfather, Robespierre and the Jacobins, surveillance committees, and poverty away from your door, and everything will be fine,” she said.

“Everything will be fine,” Marguerite said, with chastisement in her tone, to Angelique. “You don’t know what a respectable man Monsieur William is—”

“You’re going to be Madame William?” Etienne said. “That is such an un-French name; can’t you at least be Madame Guillaume?

‘De Monsieur William’ is actually the name of a type of pear tree,” he added. “Well, I think it’s a funny coincidence.”

“Monsieur William is marvelous with the children,” Marguerite said. “And Annette will stay here as long as she likes. No one is sending her anywhere.”

“Well, I guess Maman isn’t coming to chez Vincent for dinner,” Angelique said. “You know we don’t want you to go to England.”

“We could be at war with England soon,” Etienne said.

I felt like I was going to cry. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of all those things?” I said. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of them over and over? That they have no real answers? That I really don’t know what I’m going to do? That I know Marguerite is saving me from disgrace and—why don’t you ask me about how Monsieur William and I love each other? No one has asked me that.”

“You’re such a child of nature,” Angelique said. “We didn’t ask you that because we know you—that only true love could lead you into such a mess,” and she laughed. Then I laughed, a little.

“My big sister, like Julie of
Héloïse
,” Etienne said. “She became a national literary heroine for becoming pregnant out of wedlock.”

“Just get him to become a famous and wealthy poet here,” Angelique said. “I’m telling you, we don’t want you to go off to that cold island. Do you want a boy or girl?” she added.

“A girl, so she will never have to go to war,” I said immediately. I had also thought about that.

“Ah,” Etienne said, “Especially not to war against her father’s nation.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Don’t you know England is threatening to join the coalition of Prussia and Austria?”

saw me saddle La Rouge, and I felt sorry for him. I told him I’d take him out when I got back.

A strip of light fell through the half-open door and made a line of light across the dark hay. The line grew wider, and I saw the door open slowly and the shape of a man outlined there in the high doorway. Because of the sharp light behind him, I could not see the face. It was not Jean, our groom; he was big and broad. I thought of what Marie had said about brigands in the woods near Orléans.

I had heard rumors of them roaming the forest of Boulogne, south of Blois, and robbing homes in town. I gripped a whip that hung by the stalls. The shape looked in, and then turned to go. “Who is it?”

I demanded.

“Mademoiselle Vallon?” It was the musical English accent of
“Paul has not mentioned that,” Marguerite said.

“In Paris one hears things before anyone else does,” said my brother. “Have you heard of the Liberty Tree incident and the invasion of the Tuileries?”

We hadn’t. “Well, it was only two days ago. You’re so isolated down here,” Etienne said. “Do you want to hear what happened?

Paul will be surprised. I’ll have to repeat it for him at dinner. I’ll just wait till then.”

“Oh, tell it,” said Angelique. “I know you want to. We look to you for enlightenment.”

“You are our sole representative of knowledge of the outside world,” I said.

“Since you acknowledge,” he said, “my august role in this matter, I will.”

I was glad the conversation had shifted away from me, but I didn’t know what new ill tidings my brother brought from the capital. It’s said, How Paris goes, France goes.

He looked at us all individually in the eye, then began: “You know the King is in virtual house arrest in the Tuileries—a woebegone palace, if you could see it. Now, on June 20, the anniversary of the royal family’s escape attempt last summer, a Jacobin mob of thousands enters the grounds of the Tuileries, on the pretext of planting a ‘Liberty Tree ’—a bare pole with tricolor ribbons. The National Guard lets them right in. Imagine this: it’s a hot day; these people are sweating; their clothes are dirty anyway; their odor wafts up to the King and his family at the open windows of the Tuileries. So the mob sticks their ridiculous tree in the ground, does a little dance, then—they invade the palace. They’re carrying hatchets, mind you, pikes, all decked with tricolor ribbons. This is their party. One has a miniature lamppost, a filthy doll hanging from it, with ‘Marie Antoinette’ written on a placard beneath it.”