Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (30 page)

“That was altruistic of you to do so,” I said.

“You’ll find, Citizeness,” he said, “that many people, sometimes whole nations, have been left in the dark so much and for so long they do not know what is good for them. It is up to the more enlightened to show them the way.”

“And that would be you, Monsieur?”

“That would be this whole nation. And we will do that now with Austria, you will see, and with Prussia. And then, perhaps, with the rest of Europe.”

“You’re on your own crusade, then.”

“To lead Europe out of the Dark Ages. And you could say it begins here, with this abbey, with that bell—” He pointed to a cracked bell, probably used to call the monks for matins and vespers, lying in the corner of the courtyard. “We leave it there as a symbol of the lost age of superstition.”

“It could be said, sir, that you have merely substituted a new religion for the old. That you yourself are a zealot to reform people who may, themselves, have a right to remain unreformed.”

“Just because you are
enceinte
, with child, doesn’t mean you are beyond suspicion, yourself. I now know why you are friends with a counter-revolutionary.”

“I am just engaging in logical discourse, Monsieur. You do still do that—”

“You are an insolent aristocrat, Citizeness, and your day is long over.” And he handed me over to another guard, who, after saluting the officer, without looking at me, led me along a corridor to a third guard, with keys at his waist.

The third guard had a large mustache and stroked it as he glanced at my pass, then longer at me. We didn’t move; he just looked down at me and lovingly stroked his mustache. Then he finally gestured for me to walk in front of him. I thought of him stroking his mustache and looking at me still. We went down an arcade, with the dried-up remains of an herb and vegetable garden in a court on my right and a long stone building on my left. The guard finally grunted for me to stop before a large wooden door. He stood beside me now, and his hand brushed my thigh as he drew a key from the ring at his waist. Now he stroked his mustache again as the key turned. “You’ll come to me,” he said. “I can help you much more than your bourgeois lawyer.” And I hated him, much more than I hated the self-righteousness of the officer.

He closed the door, and I entered a stench of crowded unwashed bodies and open buckets of human excrement in one large room that had never known an open window or door. This must have been some meeting or dining hall for the monks. I nearly gagged and put my hand over my mouth. I called “Monsieur Vincent! Paul Vincent!”

but no one seemed to notice me. I was just another unlucky prisoner.

Then an elderly gentleman, with tattered lace at his cuffs, a dirty silk neckcloth, and even a blue velvet hat, doffed his hat for me, bowed, and said, “May I help you Madame?”

I started to speak and almost retched. The man immediately drew an embroidered handkerchief from his sleeve and handed it to me.

“Hold it over your mouth, my dear. It was, at one time, scented with vanilla. There might still be a residue. It has helped ladies before.”

With the scarf to my mouth, I managed to tell him whom I was looking for. “You mean you are not one of us, a prisoner? The world has not deserted you.” And he bellowed out, in a voice that belied his age, Paul’s name and politely maneuvered us through the throng of men and women, languishing on a thin layer of straw on the floor or standing in small groups. The only other sounds than his voice were low conversations or the constant hacking of someone coughing, and soon Paul strode up to us. “Annette, you’re not—” he began.

“No, I’m visiting, as Marguerite did.”

“Thank God. How is Monsieur William?”

Other prisoners moved away to give us our privacy. The old gentleman bowed, and I thanked him. I never saw him again. Such are
the
unremembered acts of kindness and of love, which are the better part of
a good man’s life
, as William was to write later. But I remember that man and thank him again now. In the world of anger into which I had succumbed, I remember his simple act of compassion.

“Monsieur William is on his way to join his powerful friends in Paris and rectify his situation. Oh, Paul, look at your poor face, that’s what Marguerite called it.” I lifted my hand to it and realized I still had the gentleman’s handkerchief. I looked after him, but he was lost in the many dim figures in half-light.

“It’s an awful face but glad to see yours. Come, sit on my little handful of straw.” And he helped me down. I put the handkerchief back to my face.

“You shouldn’t have come, though, Annette. This is no place for—”

“A woman in my condition? No, neither is riding a wagon to Vendôme and walking throughout that city. I think we all need the Holy Tear, Paul.”

“Ah, yes, that would be a boon.”

“Here,” and I opened a cloth sack. “The guard at the gate was very interested in this bread and this jug of water. Even this cheese, which you can’t smell in this place. Marguerite insisted that you have the bread, especially.”

“You are good to me. How’s—”

“Marie’s making beautiful drawings of autumn leaves. Gérard’s waiting for your return from Bordeaux. He’s concerned about his birthday.”

“I’m afraid he’s going to have to wait a long time.” He winced when he said that, as if the words had caused the bruises on his face new pain.

“Marguerite is strong. She says she doesn’t know why she hasn’t fallen down and died, and I said she hasn’t because she can’t. She’s being strong for the children. That bread makes you feel civilized, doesn’t it? Just the taste of it.”

“It does,” Paul said, with his mouth full. “Excuse me.” Then he added, “How is Pierre?”

“Monsieur Duclos’s arguments prevailed there. Pierre’s being released tomorrow because he is old and, they said, not right in the head anyway. They said you, on the other hand, were quite sane.”

“I don’t know about that. Well, I’m glad for Pierre. All this would be too hard on him. He wouldn’t have made the march to Orléans.”

“Paul, are you ever allowed out into the courtyard, for some fresh air?”

“Once each morning, a few others and I have been given the honor of carrying two buckets each out of this stinking place. It’s hardly enough. But it’s an attempt at being civilized, as you would say.”

“Where do you empty it?” I asked.

“It is of no concern. It does not affect my health.”

“Your health is my concern. If you are sent on to Orléans, it could truly suffer.”

He paused with a bite of bread between his teeth and looked sharply at me. Then he spoke softly.

“In the latrine. There is always an armed guard right behind me.”

“Where is the latrine?”

“At the end of the courtyard, near the wall.”

“Where near the wall?”

“What do you mean?”

“The north end of the wall? The south?”

“About halfway.”

“Does the guard ever leave you?”

“Only when I enter the latrine. He says that is not his job, to follow me in there.”

“Is there a window in the latrine?”

“At one end.”

“Where is the guard in relation to the window?”

“He is at the door, and the window is at the other end.”

“Not facing the courtyard?”

“Not facing the main courtyard, but the remaining area between the latrine and the wall.” He looked down at his straw. “The wall is very high, Annette.”

“Can you arrange to be by the wall tomorrow?”

“Annette—”

“At what time are you sent to empty the bucket?”

“Seven in the morning.”

“The same each day?”

“I hear the bell tower strike.” He touched his face. “Marguerite washed my face and did not say anything about it being all one bruise.”

“It will look better in daylight, tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Does Marguerite know of this?”

“Not yet. I wanted to talk with you.”

He paused.

“It’s not worth it, Annette, to endanger—”

I put my hand on his hand and shook my head. He looked at me, then down to the straw, and was silent. When I rose to leave, he helped me up and met my eyes and said, “Thank you.” Then he escorted me to the door, pounded twice on it, and yelled, “Visitor leaving.” The mustachioed guard opened it a crack, saw my face, and let me out. I had no time to look back at Paul before the guard slammed the door.

He didn’t start down the arcade but stood still and stared at me again. I realized I still had the handkerchief over my nose. I left it there.

“You like your friend?” the guard said.

“My brother-in-law,” I said.

“You stay with me,” the guard said. “One night, and I will see that he walks out a free man.” I wanted to slap his mustache and the hand on it. “I don’t mind that you are going to be a mother. I like them better like that,” he said.

I spoke through the handkerchief. “That is very kind,” I said, “but my brother-in-law is innocent and will be released.”

“This is your last chance,” he said. “You should take it. I do not ask again.”

“It is not necessary,” I said, and he motioned for me to walk in front of him again, and I felt him staring at me from behind.

I lay in my bed that night wondering if I were a fool, a brash fool endangering her dear brother-in-law, who might, after all, be released in Orléans. I could be ruining the happiness of my sister and of her children, and needlessly endangering myself and William’s unborn child as well. What right had I to do that? What right had I to think I could help? What hubris, for which I would be punished? And now they were trusting in me. What had I gone and done? And if I were caught? I had heard they didn’t guillotine pregnant women. They waited until they delivered their babies in prison, then guillotined them. And if William’s child was then raised by the state? Would I go to hell for making that baby an orphan, for bringing Paul to the scaffold?

I prayed to Sainte Lucette that I would successfully help Paul and his family. She had helped me twice before. And it was really such a simple plan. I had not told Paul or Marguerite what it was, for it was so simple they could doubt it, and it probably left out a thousand variables. I went over it again, pictured it all in my mind, step by step, even imagined things that could go wrong and dealt with them. Yet I still felt afraid.

Marguerite had the children ready now. They thought they were going on a trip, although I think Marie knew. When I played the scenes over and over, I always stopped when we all got in the family carriage, waiting in the road that wound through the vineyard, the carriage that would then go east on country roads, avoiding the bridge at Blois and crossing the river at Beaugency, then north on other side roads to the Channel. Paul would hire a boat from there. We just had first to get to that carriage in the dusty autumn vineyard.

I said good-bye to La Rouge in my mind. She would not understand. In a letter to Angelique, I had given my younger sister care of Rouge. Tomorrow Jean would bring Rouge and Le Bleu back to chez Vergez. Then other thoughts deluged me: William, I thought, would not want me to put myself in danger. Yet William was not a predictable man, and he was fond of Paul. No, no one could say what Monsieur William would think. I wanted Claudette to come, but the carriage was full. In a letter that Claudette would bring to my mother, Marguerite asked that Claudette, Jean, and old Pierre work at chez Vergez. Claudette and Angelique liked each other, and it would be a felicitous arrangement until I could send for Claudette, as soon as—

Sleep was useless. I pushed back the bed curtains, wrapped my old dressing gown around me, and lighted a single candle from the night-light on the wall. As I opened my door, I saw the sack behind it that held the length of rope I had bought that day, the receipt carefully left with it. I knocked on my sister’s door, heard her wide-awake response, and soon we were sitting, side by side, covered in a wool blanket, on her balcony on a soft October night, the same moon that had lit the horse, escaping to it knew not where, shining on the rows and rows of vines descending steeply to the river.

“They don’t grow grapes in England,” Marguerite said.

“I believe they’re beer drinkers,” I said.

“That’s unfortunate,” she said. “I’m all knotted up inside. Other people do this kind of thing. Dramas happen to
other
people. You don’t think they will happen to you. Why? What did we do? Monsieur Duclos is hopeless, now. Polite and very helpful—he stayed up all last night, and he had his agent get the money, but he’s hopeless.

I don’t want anything to happen to the children. But Annette, if we stayed here and did nothing, it’s likely that, if Paul, well, if he were convicted in Orléans, the state would confiscate chez Vincent anyway, and the children would lose both a father and a home.”

“That’s likely,” I said.

“My God, what did Paul do? Help an old servant, who had been with his family since before Paul was born. Wouldn’t any self-respecting man do the same? And to be put in jail, to be called a traitor, for
that
. For keeping bullies off an old man. I never knew there was so much hate in the world.”

“There’s enough love for us to be sitting here, trying to get away together.”

Then my sister’s tone turned suddenly light, even playful. “What if, Annette—what if we made it to England, and Monsieur William lived down the road, and we all ate horrible English food under the same roof?”

“That would be a delight,” I said. “But I wish we could fit Cook in the carriage. Monsieur William said her sauces were always a miracle and a mystery to him. She could set up a restaurant, and all the English would think she was mysterious and miraculous, and she ’d become famous and we would be her servants. Now that’s a revolutionary turn that I could like.”

“What about Maman, though?” Marguerite said. “She ’ll never forgive us for leaving. And poor Angelique. She always said we didn’t include her in our games.”

“I don’t think she would want to be included in this one.”

“And sweet Etienne. He ’d want to come.”

“He ’ll probably follow us.”

“I just—,” started Marguerite, “I just can’t let anything happen to the children. If they stop the carriage, they wouldn’t arrest the children—”