Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (44 page)

My Dearest Friend,

I cannot express to you my regret at leaving you or the privation
of my separation from you. I have not heard a word from you since
war was declared. All I hear are stories of horror from France. How
can I be in comfort in England when you and sweet Caroline are exposed to heaven knows what dangers?

I had to leave London. Its many people and buildings were bearing down upon me. I decided I could no longer live with such uncertainty as to what had befallen you.

Therefore, I am travelling now with William Calvert, a friend of mine from my school days at Hawkshead. He has taken an interest in my plight, has money and a desire for adventure. We are visiting the Isle of Wight, and my friend, through discreet inquiries at
the market, was directed to a heavily bearded Irishman, who never
gave us his name, who sold at his booth lace from Belgium, miniature portraits of fine French ladies, and porcelain teapots. This odd
fellow, it seems, smuggles common goods—butter, soap, candles, coffee—which I hear France is in need of, to her shores, and brings
back sundry items, probably plundered from châteaux. From him Calvert purchased passage for us across the Channel. This Irishman
assures me he has often, in his laden fishing boat, out maneuvered the British blockade—and the French National Guard at ports. He
will let us off on the Normandy coast, and we will then walk to
Orléans—or Blois—to wherever you are.

My sufferings are intolerable. In London I even followed women in the streets who resembled you, thinking, perhaps, that you had
somehow fled to English shores and were seeking me. This was especially true when I saw a woman with a small child. My sister and
friends feared for my sanity and urged the remedy of fresh air and open spaces. But they did not know truly my feelings.

Thou lovest me; I doubt it not, but the certainty of seeing thee
must drive away the doubts of thy safety that assail me. And of
course, I must see before me the face of my child. Please do not
worry for me. I like walking and sleeping in the outdoors; it is my
custom.

Yours in exile

17 July, 1793

That was almost two months ago, I thought. What had happened?

The second letter was also from England, not Normandy. I rapidly tore its seal and unfolded it.

My Dearest Friend,

I was happy to set off with the Irishman to find you, happy as I
had not been for a long time. With the gulls and the waves slapping
his small boat, some splashing over the bow and drenching me, I felt
alive again. I was going back to France.

It was at night when we left the Irishman’s cave on the Isle of
Wight, with only the slip of a moon, and we were well out in the
Channel before we saw any vessel. A ship of the British blockade
loomed before us in the dark. It was so sudden, coming out of a low
fog, we almost hit her. The Irishman turned his small boat west, and
we were not seen. But by the time we were back on course, we had lost
valuable time, he said.

We saw nothing but the choppy sea until hills on the French coast
hung in the distance, like a charcoal cloud on the horizon. There was little difference between sea, sky, and land. Then the hills began
to take shape, the one before us a little like a giant, with trees and outcroppings like wild hair and arms outraised. It reminded me of
a mountain near a lake of my youth, a mountain that seemed to be following me once; I may have told you of that story.

We made for a small bay in Normandy, our smuggler’s appointed meeting place with the Frenchmen on the black market. We could see one or two small lights on the shore, and the Irishman said these
were the lanterns of the men who were meeting him. We entered the mouth of the small bay. France was just yards away now. As we bobbed near shore, a figure raced into the water, waving his arms.

Then we heard the explosions of muskets and saw their sudden fire
and smoke in the dawn. The man who had been running cried, “It’s
a trap. Take me with you,” and swam toward us in a panic.

I recognized the uniforms of the French National Guard now, as
they took aim in the shallows and fired a volley at us. We three lay
flat on the deck. I thought of diving overboard and swimming for
the other side of the bay, but then noticed more National Guard running down the steep hill there and forming themselves on the beach.

We were surrounded.

The swimmer reached us now, and I held my hand out to him. In the pale light I could see dark blood running from his sleeve. Calvert
and I, while lying down, each had one of his arms and were just
raising him on deck when the next volley came. The man simply moaned softly and went limp in our arms. We let him slide back into
the water, & I turned & saw the Irishman lying under the mainsail & maneuvering it with one raised arm. By the time the third volley
came, we were out of range & just saw spurts of fire on the shore.

“What a waste of merchandise,” the Irishman said, and we headed
back toward England.

The cliffs on the Isle of Wight rose through shrouds of fog, and
we heard the welcome cries of English gulls over the waves when we
came again up to a British ship of the line. It looked like a floating
fort, from where we were, like a piece of kindling, on the water. This
time we had been seen. I half-expected the Irishman to start bailing
his cargo overboard, but he simply said, “She’s a slow monster.”

Our captain, while filling the air with Irish curses against the
British, took us right across the bow of His Majesty’s ship, and so
a broadside missed us. Only when we were safely hidden in the fog
again did a random cannonball lodge itself in our stern. Calvert
and I bailed buckets of water overboard as more filled the deck from
below, and the Irishman managed to take us into his watery cave
that we had left with such high hopes.

He told us that even when he had finally repaired his boat, no amount of money from my friend could induce him to take us across
the Channel again, for we were decidedly bad luck. Calvert, though,
in any case, had had enough of adventure, and I felt very bad that
I had got him into that danger. We parted on Salisbury Plain after
he drove the one-horse carriage that he rented into a ditch. He said
our whole expedition was folly of the highest order, and, indeed,
not suffering for love himself, how could he possibly know what desperateness had driven me to such folly?

You, my love, more prudent than I, are probably happy that I am safe in England. I, however, despite this disastrous expedition,
would far rather confront any Committee of Surveillance than this desolation I now feel at my destroyed hopes of seeing you, a desolation agitated further by my anxiety for you & for dear Caroline.

Last night I took bleak shelter at Stonehenge as hailstones the size
of rocks pelted the plains. I closed my eyes and imagined the wailing of wind to be voices of ancient races, raised in cries of war or of
human sacrifice—and indeed how different are we now, than then?

The cries of war now have made an insurmountable barrier out of a narrow strip of choppy sea. What remains for me now? Shall I
sacrifice prudence again and undertake another expedition of folly?

I do not have the money or means, and will, at any rate, yield to
what I believe your wishes to be—that I remain safe, though to see
you for a moment, to hear your voice say one word, would be enough
for me to try that folly again.

But for now I will walk to North Wales and visit my friend Robert
Jones, whom I told you about, with whom I traversed the continent
three years ago. In the woods and mountains of that country I will
seek the solace of Nature. If I find thee again during this war, it
will be there.

Adieu most tenderly thy dearest Friend, William.

Bath, England

27 July, 1793

I raised my eyes and gazed for some time at the September haze on the river. I could hear Caroline, as if far away in my lap, winding the watch chain around and around her little fingers. I didn’t know which emotion was the strongest—bliss at the reminder of William’s love; worry at his dangerous crossing and that his impetuous nature might try such an adventure again; or relief that he was unharmed and that he would be safe in the faraway mountains of Wales.

I felt a cold breeze off the river. Caroline wanted to be off my lap.

I folded the letters, put them in my pocket, and picked up the watch chain. It was hopelessly tangled.

Dear Annette,

I trust you have had good hunting this summer. Since I am a reformed old aristocrat, I have no time to hunt, myself, but now do
several honest days’ work before retiring to my château at week’s
end. A Republican going home to his château is rather a delicious
irony, isn’t it? Now please do me this honor: see for yourself the
patriotic zeal I employ for our new republic. I am enclosing a pass
for you to the courts tomorrow morning. Be there at nine, then lunch
with me at the Town Hall and discuss the future of Europe; you will
find it all unexpectedly enlightening. I trust you have made good use
of the old lodge. I have the honor to be, etc.

Château de Beauregard

9 September 1793

An impassive National Guardsman perused my pass, signed by the count—or rather “Henri Thibaut, City Magistrate”—and, like a taciturn valet, opened the old oaken door of the Town Hall, once a sumptuous palace, now a haven for the bureaucracy of surveillance, suppression, and propaganda. Every large room had its desks and occupants, quill in hand and sacred stamps at the ready. Every corridor, instead of hall porters, had its sentries standing silently by doors and busy clerks carrying papers to the next desk for the next stamp.

The walls, once adorned by tapestries or paintings, were now as spar-tan and stark as the morals the Revolution professed, following the example of the “Incorruptible” Robespierre.

As a guardsman, younger than myself, led me toward the courtroom, I glanced into several high-ceilinged rooms, looking in vain for that religious tapestry I had briefly glimpsed the day of my own trial. It was unnerving being here again as a free citizen; so easily, I thought, my freedom could be revoked. What if someone denounced me, having recognized me from Paul’s escape or seen me ride out late at night, leaving, past curfew, on one of my excursions? I might never walk out of here, except to go to the Beauvoir again. Why had I accepted this invitation? It could be a trap, the count now working in his new capacity as upholder of the revolutionary laws. I clutched my pass, to show that I was on the side of the powers that be, but no one noticed me.

In small groups, talking conspiratorially outside tall double doors or descending the marble staircase, I saw impeccably dressed men in high-collared cloth coats, silk cravats, and knee breeches, some even with the traditional powdered wigs. These were the lawyers. And they all boasted the tricolor cockade, pinned either to their hats or to their lapels. Apparently one could still look like an aristocrat if one just attached a cockade to one’s clothing somewhere.

Women in the market wore cockades now on their dresses or hats.

In fact, one was tempting fate if one did not wear a cockade. I had bought tricolor ribbons at the scarf lady’s table in the market, and I wore them now on the pocket of my dress. Their colors just showed beneath the edge of my shawl.

My footman in uniform rather than livery now opened the gilded doors that led me into the room of the cherubic ceiling. I felt for a moment my throat dry and my thirst come back. Why had the count asked me here? To see what happened to people who dared to defy the strict authority of the new regime? Was he trying to frighten me into ceasing to use the lodge? Well, I had already stopped, as of last week—told them the Mother of Orléans was going to be just a mother—both because it’s always good to stop while you’re ahead, and because I needed it less. Whole displaced villages, men, women, and children, were now traveling with their newly formed Royal and Catholic Army.

I sat on a hard bench in the back of the grand room and again looked up. They could strip the walls of centuries-old tapestries or art, but they didn’t bother to change the ceiling—those blue fields of heaven where plump, good-natured angels once, perhaps, looked down with some irony on a bishop’s feast, and now, with the same irony, mutely regarded revolutionary justice.

The count himself entered from a side door, elegantly dressed as usual, in his curled wig, blue silken coat, white waistcoat and breeches, and shoes whose buckles shone. The cockade hung from his wide lapels like a decoration on a party costume. He walked in with his casual air of old-world authority, sat at the center of a long table, and glanced out at the spacious room. I was one of a handful of spectators—the man in front of me was already writing in a notebook: perhaps a reporter from the Blois
Gazette
. The count’s eye briefly caught mine, then looked down at the papers on his desk.

He had a busy morning. I would have been bored had not a rising tide of anger at the absurdity and the injustice of the proceedings kept me continually awake.

The first case was that of four middle-aged aristocratic men, accused of singing funeral psalms as they carried a corpse to the cemetery. The count reminded them of the law regarding freedom of conscience but not of religious expression, sentenced them to sing “La Marseillaise” in the market square from nine to noon the following morning, and told them they were free to go but must wait for the representative-on-mission for possible further questioning.