Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (64 page)

Several times I wrote to William regarding prisoners of war who were kept in the north of England, not far from where he lived. These prisoners were sons or husbands of people who, looking for their loved ones, had contacted the Chouan network, and William used his influence as, now, a respected postmaster, to free these men and send them back to France. Each time he asked them first to come and pay their respects to Caroline and me.

One was already known to me, or, rather, especially to a dear friend of mine. Benoît appeared at our door, looking a little older after years of imprisonment, first in the southeast, then in the north of England. Like Marc, he had been stranded in Egypt, but his general had eventually surrendered to the British. Claudette almost fainted, then couldn’t talk, and Benoît couldn’t believe that she had waited all this time for him, believing in her heart that he was still alive. Now we had another reason to visit the château de Beauregard, for the count immediately gave Benoît back his old position as groom. It wasn’t long before Claudette married him and moved there.

That was a blow for me. I had never lived on my own without Claudette. Caroline had learned everything that Claudette could teach her and was more adept at caring for the animals, and certainly at cooking, than I. But I had got used to Claudette’s greeting me in the morning, sunny or cheerless. Or, after checking on the animals at night, one of us first saying good night to the other. How does one live without someone who has become such a part of one’s life?

In the summer of 1812 a young cavalry officer, recently released from prison in England, came to our door with greetings for a Madame Williams from a Monsieur Wordsworth. His name was Eustace Baudouin, and he had a locket with a miniature portrait of William, looking older and very serious, his hand against his head, for Caroline.

He also had a handsome younger brother, Jean-Baptiste. They both kissed Caroline’s hand. Jean-Baptiste couldn’t stop staring at Caroline. When they left, I asked Caroline if she thought he was rude, staring at her like that. She said she hoped he would never stop staring at her. And so, indirectly through her father, Caroline met her future husband. I’m not the first one to say that it’s a strange world.

It was at that time that Napoleon, full of his own hubris, invaded Russia with his Grande Armée of 400,000 men, and the Russian general wisely drew them further and further into his heartland, finally battled him before Moscow, then withdrew again, burning his own city and his people’s land, so the Grande Armée had nowhere to stay the winter and nothing to eat and had to turn around and walk thousands of miles back: and so Napoleon was finally defeated not by an enemy but by nature herself, who had decided to pay him back through a Russian winter.

As Napoleon fought his way back across Germany with a small and hungry army, Jean-Baptiste and Caroline courted, and after Cossacks did not stop their horses until they reached the banks of the Seine, and Paris fell and Napoleon was exiled to Elba, the young lovers decided to marry. That was the spring of 1814, after twenty-two years of war. Caroline would be twenty-two in December.

I wrote to William and Dorothy to come to the wedding in the fall, and Dorothy answered that William was still in mourning over the loss of two of his children, just over a year before. Could we possibly wait until the next spring?

Caroline decided to wait. Jean-Baptiste worked as a clerk in a local law office, and he would dine with us, then I would hear the lovers talking or laughing downstairs until late at night. It made me feel old, and one evening I saddled La Noire, the mare Jean-Luc had given me, and rode to the château de Beauregard to stay with people more my age, and the count, who always made me feel young.

But when the spring of 1815 came, any wedding was out of the question, especially with foreign guests. Napoleon had escaped from Elba. What we thought was over forever had suddenly returned and overturned our lives.

The emperor had to raise an army, quickly, and Jean-Luc and I created many posters that told the young men, eager for some glory, that France had given enough of its blood. They didn’t need to add themselves to the sacrifice. We put these posters up before dawn, in outlying villages and in the market squares of Blois. One early morning, as market began in the old Saint-Louis Square, I waited for Jean-Luc and lingered in the square, watching some people idly reading the posters.

Then I suddenly stood up on the Louis XII fountain, which still hadn’t been rebuilt. Just in case I needed to hide my identity again, before setting out that night with Jean-Luc I had put on the old blonde wig. I stood on the ruins of the fountain now and called out to the people that when the conscription officers came this afternoon, they should not cooperate with them. They should leave the town, hide, defy the officers openly if they dared. “You, parents,” I said, “do not let your sons be carried away by dreams of glory. That glory is a chimera. We must call it so to its face and refuse its lure, when it calls us.”

A small crowd had gathered. One older man even shouted, “It’s the Blonde Chouanne!” and the man next to him laughed, but others didn’t laugh. And the faces of women looked up at me and nodded.

Then Jean-Luc, who had been putting posters up on the hill, in the small square in front of the church of Saint-Vincent, suddenly took my arm and led me from the fountain. “Remember what she says,” he shouted as we left, “for this woman is a prophetess!” We mounted our horses and rode toward the château before any new representatives of the emperor could arrive. “You’re incorrigible,” he said to me as we rode. “Something about that square makes you reckless. Jeanne Robin told me about a speech you made there long ago.”

I listened to the rhythm of the hooves crossing the stone bridge, the spring river swirling high beneath us. “When will they learn that it’s all a waste?” I said, “just a terrible waste?”

In mid-June, a few days after my forty-sixth birthday, I heard children playing in the morning in the road that ran by the cottage. I thought how strange it is that children play when there is a war going on, that marvelous obliviousness that lovers also share. Lovers often have the pressure of the world right behind them, though, just out of earshot though ignored, but children genuinely do not know another world exists. I was thinking this while savoring the sound of the children, which I have always loved, when I realized there were adults screaming.

I ran outside and grabbed an older man by the arm, “What
is
it?” I asked.

“The emperor is defeated!” he wailed. He and the fellow with him seemed to be self-appointed town criers, although perhaps it was really that they couldn’t bring themselves to believe it, and they were releasing their grief and shock to the world.

“C’est la fin de l’Empereur
,” the other man cried, in a lamenting voice that I will never forget.

Then market women came by in a panic, saying that Prussians were burning and pillaging Paris and raping the women. Their cavalry would be in Blois by tomorrow. Then a man said that the English had captured Paris and that the emperor had surrendered to them.

The man had only one arm. I thought I’d believe him.

It was all over, in any case, all over again. I wondered how many of the men who died had come from Blois.

British soldiers were bivouacked now in the Bois de Boulogne, and the English were not popular. It was not a time for English tourists.

We postponed the wedding again, until the new year.

February of 1816, with the muddy or icy roads of winter, was not a good time for travelers from the north of England to make it to Blois, but some from the south could.

All the Vincents were coming to the wedding. William sent enough money to provide for ample food and drink, and the count supplied any reserves of nourishment that anyone could need. The wedding itself was held in Saint-Vincent, the church on the high hill, with its broad steps down which Caroline’s train flowed. Guests who desired to make the short journey to the château de Beauregard would be fêted there far into the night.

It was a cold, sunny day. My daughter, whom I had spent almost every day with since her birth, took her vows under her white veil, under the high ceiling, vaulted to heaven, and Jean-Baptiste lifted her veil, and I beheld her radiant face.

I can tell you that Marguerite did not look at all twenty-four years older, and Paul, with his gray hair, still had his discerning eyes and ready smile, and that I didn’t recognize Marie, who had a daughter by the hand and an English doctor on her arm, nor Gérard, in the uniform of a British lieutenant in His Majesty’s navy. When I exclaimed at that, he said, “I always liked knots, Aunt Annette, I liked tying you up.” His ship had been part of the British blockade, and he spoke French with an English accent. We embraced, and I cried like a baby. He kissed my cheek once like an Englishman, until his mother reminded him.

At the château de Beauregard, I danced first with Paul. “In his letters home from the navy,” he said to me, “Gérard said he was loath to fire on any boat coming from France for fear it was his aunt, escaping. He did not forget you.”

I danced with Gérard, and asked him about it. “It is true,” he said, “every French woman is my aunt. I want to protect them all. I’m afraid I’ve told the story many times of my aunt who risked her life to save me and my family. I’ve impressed young ladies with it. Though I’ve frightened some away, I believe. I’ve embellished a bit, for drama. Told them my aunt was guillotined. I think they’re afraid I would expect such a sacrifice from them, if the time came. I make it sound like you’re the most fearless woman in the world. How could they possibly compete?”

What would he say to them if he knew what I had actually been doing all these years? I thought. “I loved the version of
Romance of the Rose
you sent,” he said, “though my French is a bit rusty and it was tough going. When will you finish it? I read Chaucer’s version in school, you know. It wasn’t as good.”

I smiled. “I’ll finish it someday,” I said.

I glanced past Gérard’s tall shoulder at my mother, dancing with the old count. They looked very well together. Monsieur Vergez had died the year before.

Angelique had married Marc, and their son, Charles, scampered under tables laden with breasts of duck in apricot sauce on little white-and-gold china plates, with cheeses, with fountains of fruit, bowls of nuts, and wines and champagne and cakes. William couldn’t have paid for all that, I thought. And little Charles sat there under the table eating cakes while his mother and father danced.

Gérard showed me a two-handed card game as we sipped champagne, and I watched Caroline and Jean-Baptiste glance in secret happiness at each other as they each talked with separate guests. Caroline wore the locket her father sent her from England, but it was Paul, whom she had never met, who had walked her down the aisle.

Caroline greeted Claudette, her second mother, and held both Claudette’s hands in hers. Claudette was talking fast and crying at the same time.

Now Marguerite clapped her hands together, saying something to Caroline. My older sister had escaped living in a country of war for more than twenty years; she had always lived a charmed life, I thought. I had never told her of my work, for fear of discovery, and the whole Vincent family, as well as myself, was surprised at what soon followed.

* * *

The count stopped the small orchestra. He waved to get everybody’s attention. I thought he was going to give another toast, but we had already done that. Perhaps the old count was a little drunk. But he didn’t look drunk. He said a few words about the auspicious occasion.

And then he said, So, it is high time Caroline’s mother be honored.

What did he mean? Everyone looked at me, and I felt embarrassed.

“And a few others would like to say some words on this matter,” he said.

Jean-Luc stood now beside the count. “Some of you know,” he said, “that I was engaged in resisting the Paris government’s interference with our own lives. But many of you don’t know that I had a secret partner, who continued in the work long after I retired to America to paint landscapes, which only a few of you have had the misfortune to see. If I wanted any task to be done, the one person I could count on, no matter how dangerous the mission, was the one who became known throughout this region as the Blonde Chouanne.”

He looked over at me. There were some stirs at this.

“Needless to say, she wore a wig and a green mask, and I heard this way of dress even became the mode at parties!”—some scattered laughter followed—“among those who had no idea into what dangers the Blonde Chouanne rode. I will not recount for you her adventures, better left in the long years of strife, but you don’t have to take my word for all this.” And he withdrew now a paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “This police missive somehow found its way into my hands a long time ago—” More laughter here. “I have kept it for posterity’s sake. I quote from Corbigny, Prefect of Police, Blois, March 16, 1804, responding to a summons from Napoleon’s secret police, March 8, 1804, ‘to have the conduct carefully observed of the demoiselle Vallon...married to an Englishman named William.’”

He read that last phrase quickly. “‘The woman Williams’, Napoleon’s police say, ‘is particularly known as an active intriguer.’ Now, they are a bit slow, and that’s a good thing, for at this time Madame Williams had been an ‘active intriguer’ for over ten years!

“The new prefect of police of Blois, Guillemin de Savigny, gathered some information for us in preparation for this our moment of honoring her. He writes, ‘Madame Williams, born M. A. Vallon, she it was who saved the head of Monsieur Delaporte, reported by informers to the Revolutionary Tribunal, by hiding him as well as Chevalier de Montlivault; she also who got Count Dufort out of prison, and others....Blois was known to be the haven of the unfortunate outlaws. To her they were directed from everywhere
.
’” There were some mumblings of awe among the guests, and I felt acutely embarrassed. Why had Jean-Luc decided to do this now? This wasn’t my night. And I didn’t want any recognition. People knew of the Blonde Chouanne. They didn’t know of me.