Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (52 page)

Now you both clasp your hands behind your heads also.”

“Even Rousseau says women should not be involved in politics,” said the blue-cloaked woman, as she put her hands behind her head.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Monsieur Rousseau, Madame, is still a man,” I said.

“My husband is captain of the Revolutionary Army stationed at Cholet,” she said. “He will hunt you down. No rebels have a chance with us.”

“Far better, Madame, that he hunt you. After all your travels, you want him off chasing me?” I said. “I do not want to delay your reunion any longer, but do you know what goes on in Cholet and other places in the Vendée? St. James himself says we are to help widows and orphans. So know, Madame, that the
collection
in this box will go to help children whose parents have been murdered; to mothers who have seen their daughters raped on the side of the road and then shot or stabbed; or to old ones who have seen soldiers carry nursing infants on their bayonets or on the pikes that had pierced mother and child with the same thrust.”

I watched her face unwittingly turn from scorn to horror. “This is the world that you enter to the west, Madame,” I said. “Just ask your husband. I do not exaggerate. Now you two,” I pointed with my pistol to the Guardsman and the sans-culotte, “one at a time, first you, sit down right in front of me, take off your boots, and throw them in the carriage.” The Guardsman did so. “Now you, Citizen.” The sans-culotte stared at me maliciously, sat in the road and pulled off his boots, and threw them in the open door of the carriage.

“Now toss in your red cap,” I said.

“Not my cap,” he said.

I tucked a pistol in my skirt, drew the stiletto from my sleeve, rode beside the frightened sans-culotte and with the tip of the stiletto picked the cap off his head and tossed it onto the side of the road where it lay like a red leaf in the brush.

“No Parisian sans-culottes out to terrorize the provinces here,” I said. “You’re in the Forest of Boulogne now.” I put the stiletto back and drew the second pistol again.

“You are the worst kind,” the sans-culotte said, pipe still in his mouth. “The kind who weep at night for the death of the King. Well, his little son you call Louis XVII is rotting away in prison as fast as he can. Weep for him all you want,” and his hand darted into his coat.

I shot into his open coat and heard the bullet hit metal. The sans-culotte jumped back, white-faced, and inspected his hand to see if it had been hit.

“You’re all right, Citizen. Just place the gun on the ground, now, slowly. Thank you. I think you better start your march to Blois now.

Both of you, go.” And I watched them walk in their stockinged feet to the bend in the road. “Beware of horsemen riding fast in the dark who may not see you,” I said. “Or horsewomen.”

I motioned to the driver with my pistol to remount his seat. “Now, Madame, back inside. I’m sure your journey will be much more comfortable without the odor of the sans-culotte so close beside you.” I took a note from my pocket and handed it to her as she climbed into the carriage. “That is a receipt, signed by me,
La Chouanne
, on behalf of the Philanthropic Institute, for the contents of that metal box. Rest assured, as I said, that their new destiny is far preferable to their old one. Tell your husband, the
blonde chouanne
wishes that the tender-ness he bears for his pretty wife engenders in him at least one degree of mercy for the poor people of Cholet.
Adieu
, Madame.

“Allez,”
I said to the horses, and the driver cracked his whip, the carriage trundled on, and I tucked the pistols in my skirt. Then La Rouge and I plunged into the darkness on the other side of the road.

I shouted to the first gleaming stars, “Your daughter is a thief!

Your sister has robbed a carriage! What do you think of that?” I let out a long, high, triumphal cry as I galloped across the old meadow.

Then I thought of my brother and of the people of Cholet and of my puny victory, and I took off my mask and rode quickly home.

Jeanne Robin, late from stealing back a friend’s horse from a small patrol of the Revolutionary Army, never missed another rendezvous. She was a fine horsewoman who had served in the cavalry of the Royal and Catholic Army of the Vendée, and with her help that autumn we raided more coaches that carried rents collected from church properties, always on different routes, as far west as Amboise, as far east as Saint-Laurent, or north toward Vendôme or south past Cheverny. Sometimes even the marquis himself and a few of his men came along. I think it amused him to sit on horseback behind the two women as they parleyed with the people in the carriage. No road in the region was safe from us, and the money was passed on through the efficient network of the Institute, which found homes for refugees in Normandy or Brittany, or occasionally used the money to bribe officials or National Guard officers to set prisoners free. No one ever traced the masked blonde Chouanne with a pistol in each hand and a stiletto on her sleeve to the amber-haired mother who, child in arms, sold fresh vegetables, fruit, eggs, goat cheese, and live rabbits at the market.

In early October I had come back at dawn from the raid on the coach near Amboise, and as I didn’t want to disturb the sleeping Caroline or Claudette, and as, in any case, I wasn’t ready to sleep yet, I busied myself in the dew-filled garden, picking ripe tomatoes, plucking off ones half eaten by birds or other creatures, and pulling some ever-present weeds from the damp earth. It was after some fifteen minutes that I became aware that I was being watched. I could feel it, on the back of my neck. I realized I still had my Chouan costume on—blonde wig and tricorne hat with the white feather—and heard someone say, in a familiar accent, “Excuse me, do you know if an Annette Vallon lives here?”

I answered, without moving from my crouched position near the tomatoes, “A Madame Williams lives here,” and I looked up and there was my precious William himself, his face so full of confusion and surprise, relief and wonder, tiredness and worry, that I ran the few steps to him, embraced him, and said, “It is I, just in costume for a while,” and I threw off my hat into the rosemary, pulled off the wig, tossed it on top of the hat, and shook out my long amber hair.

“But—” William started.

“How did you get here?” I said. “Come in the house—” Before I could finish my sentence my lips found his, or ours found each other, and our arms wound us into one creature, shadowed in the thin light above the mint and lavender. There was no question now of moving into the house. Without a word we fell to our knees at the edge of the garden; then, falling into the herbs, we kissed and unbuttoned and lifted muddy skirts. There was no lengthy kneading of back or shoulders, no gradual warming of limbs that had once again found each other. The smell of his sweat and mine, of his dirty linen shirt, the fresh smell of the morning and of the dew-wet leaves under us, mixed with the danger that I had known that night, his sudden inexplicable appearance, and the unbelievable reality of his flesh and lips.

We lay quiet, breathing hard next to each other, his hand still on my thigh, and we laughed when we got to our knees, returned to the world, and saw the lavender bed crushed. I took his hand and led him to the kitchen door.

“Now, softly, we leave our boots and coats here,” I said. William knelt and gently took my boots off and let his hand stay a moment on my ankle.

I poured us both cups of water from the jug on the table and looked at him and laughed again, and said, “How?”

He smiled, and I shook my head.

“Come see your beautiful daughter while she is still asleep.” And I led him silently, even though I was full of a thousand questions: Did he plan to take us back to England, or even to stay in France? Both seemed fraught with insurmountable difficulties. Most of all was the question I had already asked: How in the world had he gotten here?

But now was not the time for talking; I just wanted to feel his hand in mine, to watch his face as he watched his daughter’s.

We stood above her simple crib, the walls above it adorned with pictures I had drawn of the sun and of a deer in a meadow, and one of a foal standing on its feet for the first time. And before us dangled another crude horse I had carved and painted red, and attached on a long cord so it hung from the ceiling above Caroline’s bed. She often just lay and stared at it, sometimes her legs kicking the mattress with happiness as a breeze from an open window stirred the horse and made it dance, or she might bat it with a hand to watch it spin. I stood there, watching the toy horse that I had thought William would never see, never share in this little joy of hers.

“What’s wrong?” William said.

“Nothing, nothing; I can’t believe you’re here. I am so happy you are here.”

“She is beautiful. She looks like you.”

“You will see she has your eyes. Your deep poet’s eyes. And look at her English nose. It’s a nice nose. A nose of character.”

“Babies don’t have noticeable noses.”

“What would you know of babies?” We were whispering, and backed away from the crib.

“Annette, I tried to come—”

“No, I did not mean that,” and I took his hand and kissed him again. It was a long, slow kiss now, and I reached my arms up around his neck, and he held me against his slender and sturdy body, which had just walked so far to be here, in this room, at this moment. We bent to my small bed, and now discarding the clothes that, in our impatience, we had hardly noticed before, letting them lie beside the bed like old skins dropped off, lazily and leisurely, taking all the time in the world, we explored again the geography of the landscapes that we had known only in dreams. This time we fell deeply asleep.

We had three small bedrooms upstairs, but I wanted to be near Caroline if she needed me in the night. I heard that other babies cried when they awoke in the morning; mine cooed, or hummed a tune that climbed or descended in pitch and seemed to bespeak some inner contentment on opening one’s eyes to the world, of which only babies and lovers in one another’s arms know the secret. This morning her soft sounds did not wake me, but Claudette, with her own spontaneous cry upon entering the room, did. The cherished moment of William and I waking together became a confused and somewhat embarrassed one.

But Claudette went straight to Caroline’s crib, picked her up and said, “I think your
maman
and papa are asleep. We won’t disturb them,” and left.

Soon we heard and smelled something good floating up from the kitchen. I washed my face, put on my old worn satin slippers, and joined Claudette. I decided, in this rare and celebrative occasion, we should use our hoarded bit of coffee. I was dipping the spoon into those fragrant and precious grounds when Claudette finally said, “How did he—?”

“I don’t know. He arrived at dawn, just before I did.”

“You didn’t ask him?”

“It wasn’t the time to talk.”

“Well, someone needs to know what to do if the Committee of Public Safety comes around, asking about someone with an accent, traveling without papers. By the way, I picked up a blonde wig and a cap with a royalist feather in it from among the rosemary leaves.

You’re getting careless. Did you greet each other without words out there, too?”

“Thank you.” I shrugged.

“Ah. Well, I’m making him an English breakfast, thought he ’d need it.”

“Claudette, he’s here. He’s actually here!”

“Does he know what you’ve been doing?”

“We didn’t—”

“That’s right. First things first. Well, here’s the sleepy Englishman.”

With her hands full, Claudette kissed both his cheeks and flipped an omelette a second later, catching it in her pan. “You’ve always amazed me,” said William. “I’m so glad you are still with Annette.”

“Where else would I go?” she said. “And I’m Caroline’s guardian, don’t forget. She’s the lucky girl with two mothers. Now, Monsieur William, how would you like to do the offices of third mother and feed this lovely child? That way your fiancée and I can finish making your big English breakfast.” And before he could answer, Claudette placed Caroline on his lap and a spoon and a bowl of mush before him. William seemed somewhat hesitant, but Caroline didn’t seem to mind, with the familiar bowl before her, and, after taking a cursory glance at the stranger and seeing that, with her two mothers close by, it was all right, opened her mouth for the first spoonful.

“You’re doing very well, William,” I said.

“Mush on her mouth only accentuates her natural beauty,” he said.

We sat down to a feast of cheese and tomato omelette, sausage, and coffee. I took Caroline from William’s lap and let her sit with me, occasionally giving her a bit of omelette from my plate.

“France is not in such a deprived state as I have heard,” William said.

“We have our own supplies here,” I said. “Did you see our barn?”

“I thought of hiding in there until daylight, but two goats pushed me out and a fat pig grunted at me.”

“That would be Emilie, Frederick the Great, and Horace,” Claudette said.

“Horace?”

“He is a very wise pig, with literary ambitions,” I said. “But I don’t know if they will ever be realized. He may go to market soon.”

“
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
; ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country,’ ” William said. “Horace wrote that.”

“Then he ’ll definitely be going to market soon,” I said.

“Who’s Horace?” Claudette said. “I just thought it was a good name for a pig. When you two used to talk,” said Claudette, “I rarely did understand half of what you were saying. Now, Monsieur William, how did you know to find this house? How did you get across the Channel? How are you going to keep your head on? If Annette doesn’t care to know, I need to satisfy my own curiosity.”

“I visited the Dubourg residence in Orléans, the last place I knew you to be, and was told of your new address, and I must add that I think it is a fine improvement, in spite of Horace’s temperament. By the by, I found out that the landlord of my old residence in Orléans, who was fond of letting rooms to officers ready to emigrate, lost his head just last week: that’s the casual way I hear it said here, as if it’s just part of daily life, and unfortunately, I suppose it is. To the second question, I crossed on a smuggler’s boat from Torquay to Saint-Valéry. They said it was my lucky day. They usually don’t sail that far, but can get more money if they put in closer to Paris, so they chanced it this time. I am to meet them for the return trip at Cateret, on the Cherbourg Peninsula, in a week’s time—Annette, this was a Cornish smuggler, who comes from a long line of successful smugglers, not one of the new ones on the Isle of Wight trying to take advantage of the recent situation and working within sight of the British fleet—did you get that letter?”