Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (4 page)

As we crossed the narrow stone bridge over the Beuvron River, they surrounded our horses and held on to their reins as we walked.

A women caressed my riding skirt and undid its lower buttons up to the saddle (I already had the bottom two undone, myself, for freedom when I rode) and fingered my petticoats and tore lace fragments off.

Our strange procession wound its way up the long tree-lined entryway to the château, a road most of them had probably never been on. “Long live the Third Estate,” they began chanting. Now the Third Estate literally meant all Frenchmen except the clergy and the nobles (the First and Second Estates), and this, of course, included Etienne and me, though the peasants seemed surprised when we shrugged and joined in the chanting. “I’ll always say
long
life
to myself,” Etienne said to me.

My escort now grabbed the bridle tight as La Rouge snorted at another woman who tore off a large handful of petticoat, exposing part of my left leg, and I dared not lower my crop at them, for they surrounded us so our horses could hardly move, and although they all seemed jolly, and some now, tired of the chant, started singing, it was prudent, I thought, especially in these days, not to aggravate a crowd.

We stopped by the ruins of the chapel in front of the château. The count had told me this chapel was three hundred years older than the original château: matins were sung here long before our dances graced his gilded ballroom. Today a few peasants, warm from the walk, lounged in the shade of the chancel and leaned against the top-pled stones that would have once vaulted over their heads. Now the green woods beckoned through the fallen ceiling.

Most of the peasants stood, still chanting or singing their own songs. They stared at the impassive face of the château. Suddenly the count emerged from his broad doors and stood in front of them, his arms crossed, surveying the crowd. The chanting and singing ceased abruptly. The count wore his velvet dressing gown and soft indoor shoes, and his eyes fell on Etienne and me, on our horses toward the back, the bridles of both of our frightened horses held by more than one pair of hands. Then he smiled and spread his arms wide, “Welcome, citizens,” he cried out, and they all cheered, and he himself pulled the ancient iron knocker and opened the doors of the château de Beauregard to people I’m sure he had never dreamed would enter it. “Leave your tools in the courtyard, please,” he said.

Etienne and I rode to the stables and quickly unsaddled and brushed our horses. We wanted to see how the count was faring with the crowd, and I took the big iron lock from behind the stable door and closed and locked the doors. If I so much as saw anyone approaching where La Rouge was kept, I’d be there with my pistol.

We hastened to the château and found the count as if leading the crowd on a tour of his home. “This,” he said, “is our kitchen.” It was, in fact, almost as big as the chapel; it certainly held within it a religion, I think, which the count practiced more regularly. “Observe,” he said, “how we can have two capons or haunch of venison turning at once in two different fireplaces.”

I’m not sure if at first he thought they just wanted to look at the château, or if he thought that if he could charm them, then they would leave, but they seemed still in awe of the château, or of him. “You see there, bread freshly baked for supper—have your fill; I wish we had more.” And in a second two loaves were grabbed, then fought over and torn for general consumption. The count saw men heading down some stairs. Etienne and I looked at each other. The count pushed his way to the front of the crowd and held up his hand. “My special gift, for this day in which we honor the Third Estate” (he must have heard the chant coming up his drive), “is that those of you who are old enough—not you,
ma petite
,” he said to a girl my sister Angelique’s age, scampering past him, “are welcome to sample my superb cellar, with the best of wines from throughout the Loire Valley—” No one but Etienne and I heard the last words, as men rushed by us over the flagstone floor. But others, mainly women, now ran in a predatory frenzy into the other rooms as well. His stand before the cellar door had been the count’s last semblance of authority over the crowd, his act of giving to them so they would not be stealing from him.

Etienne and I blanched as we saw men emerge from the cellar with bottles in their hands, breaking their tops off before us in the kitchen and grabbing crystal glasses, in their hurry breaking others, or, in a fit of bravado, a man drinking gingerly from the jagged top of a broken bottle, then giving it, as a challenge, to his neighbor. “You should go,” Etienne said to me. “I’ll stay here and see that the count’s all right.”

“Then I’ll stay too,” I said, and we went into the front salon and saw a man drinking straight from a bottle of Chinon red with his feet up on one of the new embroidered chairs. But most of the count’s guests seemed in a hurry to grab something before someone else did—porcelain teacups disappearing into giant apron pockets; on top of the lace tablecloth of the dining room table, women in dirty bare feet reaching up to pull candles out of the chandelier; other women ripping large sections off the tablecloth or jerking at the velvet draperies, pulling them down, and one taking a knife from her pocket to cut sizable portions to carry home.

I saw the count calmly talking to an outraged Edouard—the only time I ever saw the count’s valet other than imperturbable—and patting Edouard on the back and sending him out of the house. Now Etienne and I sat on stools by one of the fireplaces in the kitchen.

I had hardly ever been in the kitchen before, and I noticed writing inside the chimney, on the stones above the spit that turned the game.

I got up, peered into the sooty emptiness, and read:
Those who keep
their promises have no enemies.

The count had opened one of his own bottles of champagne and was coming toward us with three glasses. But he never reached us, for one of his guests grabbed the bottle, another the glasses, and a third one, a big man, swaying back and forth, stopped him. “O great Count,” he said in a voice that carried throughout the kitchen. “I would like...an omelette!”

“Why not?” the count said. His cook and all his servants had left when they saw the mob coming, so he looked over at my brother and me. “Now it’s your turn to help the Third Estate,” he shouted to us.

“Fetch eggs and cheese and butter from the pantry before they’re all gone, please.” He reached up to a tall shelf and threw us two baskets each. The pantry had not been ravaged yet—grabbing
things
seemed more important first—and we returned with perhaps more than the count wanted, but we stood beside him, and Etienne stoked the fire and I mixed the ingredients and the count prepared omelette after omelette. Some took it in their hands, others pulled porcelain plates off shelves. “The Vallons always come through in a pinch. Didn’t know you knew how to mix so well, Annette.”

“Didn’t know you could cook so well. Count,” I said, “what promises have you broken? I’m referring to—” I motioned with my head towards where I had been sitting.

“The old fireplace motto! That’s been here at least two hundred years. As a child I’d visit Cook and she showed me that once and made me promise I wouldn’t break promises. But all these people—”

he waved a hand and held a pan with the other. “They are not my enemies. If they were, they would have left my body pierced with a pitchfork before my own door—and believe me, that has happened to others of late—no, they are just a bit
on fire
with the opportunity, suddenly available this summer, to get something more for themselves or for their families. If any promises have been broken, I’m afraid they are right about the Third Estate—it’s been by those in love with power in the First and Second Estates. No, they may ransack my château, but they are not my enemies, and I am not theirs. Still, I must make precautions.”

He told Etienne to take what was left of the finest champagne and hide it in the garden and bring us a few bottles in here. Etienne returned sometime later with three bottles and put them before us.

“I’ve heard of people in châteaux burying jewels and silver in the garden, but only you, Count, would think of burying champagne.”

“Jewelry and silver don’t taste the same as a Vouvray
pétillant
,” said the count, “nor do they soothe the soul,” and he took three glasses miraculously from his coat pockets and filled them. “To the Third Estate,” he said, and we drank as he continued to cook and hand out omelettes. When we had used all the ingredients, he said, “I am going to sit down awhile and finish this bottle. Perhaps it would be prudent if you two retired to what is left of your rooms and rested until the tide recedes. It may be beginning to ebb. Even looting gets to be a bore, you know. It’s the new
ennui
of the Revolution,” and he lifted his glass to us. “Meet me for supper,” he said, and made his way over to the stool I had sat on. He looked very tired, and perhaps, even for the first time, old.

A stench of unwashed bodies suffocated me now in the warm afternoon, and I opened the French doors to the inner courtyard and stepped out and looked in the direction of the stables, but saw no one.

They were too occupied with the glories of the house. I turned and saw a woman standing on a velvet chair and tearing down the hunting tapestry from the wall in the dining room. She got down from the chair and pulled out her knife. “No, no,” the count came running in from the kitchen, glass in hand. Then he stopped himself. He bent to put his glass on a table, noticed the table wasn’t there, and put his glass on the wine-stained parquet floor. “One must roll it up, like this—if you put it on a wall, it will keep the cold down. If you cut it in small portions, it can’t keep your home warm. Keep it like this, it will serve you well, Citizeness.” And he finished rolling it up, ripped a tassel from a drapery piece on the floor, and tied up the tapestry. He put it in the arms of the woman. “This is for you,” he said, “from the château de Beauregard. Keep it well.”

I went up the long marble staircase, partway down the corridor, and knocked on Etienne’s door. A looter carrying an armchair calmly walked by me. No one seemed interested in the paintings of kings.

“Who is it?” my brother asked.

“I just wanted to see that you were safe,” I said through the door.

“How are you?”

“I should have taken one of the bottles of champagne with me. All my things are gone except for what I have on me. I’ll see you when the mob goes, Annette. You lock your door, now.”

It was horrible not being able to help my brother. And, at seventeen, I think it was harder for him when everything he knew was falling apart. I had already felt something like that, once. I didn’t really care if my things were gone—all except one: my diary, which had in it my writings since my sixteenth birthday. And it was where I had always kept it since convent school.

I entered my room, locked the door, and opened the heavy oak wardrobe: in the back of the shelf at the top I saw the hatbox. I grabbed a footstool—the chair had been taken—and stood on my tiptoes and pulled the box down. Either no one had looked inside or they didn’t care for my plumed hat; underneath it rested my diary. Habits developed in convent school still held me in good stead. I shoved the box back up and lay on my carved beechwood bed, far too heavy to move. All my draperies, bed curtains, sheets, and blankets were gone, as was the writing desk, the bedside table and the small mahogany commode, and my silk and muslin dresses and velvet redingote that had hung in the wardrobe. Even the châteaux’ old bronze chamberpot with, for some unknown reason, the likeness of the American Benjamin Franklin engraved on its bowl was gone from under the bed. My copies of medieval epics, though,
Eric and Enide
and
The Romance of
the Rose,
lay unharmed on the floor where the bedside table had been.

Those had marginalia in them from when I was sixteen and seventeen, and would have been harder to replace than any fine muslin gown. My pistol was still in the pocket of my riding skirt.

Our world was turning on its head, and the count, through his clever solicitousness, was keeping us all safe. Most of the noise and activity came from below, where the wine still flowed: drunken, raised male voices. Perhaps the count had a strategy in opening his cellar first: many would get so drunk they would be no good at more extensive looting.

Still aware, though, of the possibilities of a drunken mob, I kept my hand in the pocket of my skirt that held my pistol. I heard male voices outside my door and someone trying to turn the doorknob, then kicking the door, lunging his shoulder against it. Then he was criticized by his friend, who himself now tried the door, with more force. My finger lay quietly on the trigger and my thumb uncocked the pistol, but I kept it in my pocket. I didn’t want the men to see me pointing it at them if they entered the room, and have an excuse for violence. The doors of the château de Beauregard were made strong, and the looters must have grown tired of trying it, or their shoulders hurt, and I gratefully heard their steps retreat down the hall, then others passing by but not stopping, then silence, and the noise slowly subsiding below.

It seemed that they had all had enough. I cautiously walked downstairs and saw the count’s ravaged salons and the last of the rioters leaving, their arms full of live chickens, bottles, copper pots and pans, kitchen knives, silver utensils, long strips of velvet drapery, porcelain plates and cups and teapots, even the pair of wolves from the mantel in the library. With no women living in the house, there seemed to be no jewelry available, but the count’s guests made up for it in furniture: pairs of men carrying out the Turkish couch, a woven silk one embroidered with figures of peacocks, the Moroccan leather one with a brass boar’s head (I didn’t mind seeing that go), an ottoman, a mahogany writing table mounted in bronze, a veneered tea table, a silver candelabrum, a carved oak armoire that four men tried to take down the stairs, then dropped it halfway and left it there, a clock in gilded bronze, and so many carved and gilt wood chairs I couldn’t tell you.