New World, New Love (29 page)

During the voyage, Louise saw Fernand whenever passengers were able to gather for meals in the dining saloon and on deck, if it proved possible to walk there, well-clad against the cold. He always ignored her and she was thankful for it. She was sure he would have been more troublesome towards her if he had not gained the company of a young woman whom he had met on the first day of the voyage. A returning émigré, she was on her way home to her husband, who had survived the Revolution, but in the meantime she appeared to be totally charmed by Fernand. They were frequently on their own in her cabin.

It was a long eight weeks at sea for all the passengers before the last days of the voyage slipped away. The waves eased and everyone made the most of the better weather by being up in the open air most of the time.

On the morning of the first day of March, Fernand came to stand by Louise as she stood gazing at the smudge of land on the horizon that was France. ‘So, we’re home at last,’ he said with a deep sigh of relief.

Louise’s feelings towards her homeland were mixed. She had felt a deep rush of love for France upon seeing it again. It had warmed her heart with a forcefulness that had wiped out all that had sullied it for her in the time before her escape. But was it home any more? Surely that lay in the country she had left behind?

They landed at Toulon. Ahead lay the long cross-country journey to Bordeaux and the château. Louise felt no surprise in being addressed as
Citoyenne
instead of
Madame
, for she knew that many courtesies from the past had been wiped out in her absence. Fernand had no difficulty in hiring a coachman and an equipage to drive them all the way to the château, for transporting returning émigrés had become a profitable business and he had a choice of coachmen eager for the task.

As the coach rumbled over the cobbles through Toulon and other towns along the route, Louise watched to discover what changes had been made since she was last in France, but everything looked much as before, except that no scarlet Phrygian caps were being worn anywhere. After religion had been banned during the Revolution, it had not been unusual to see one of these caps on a church steeple, but since First Consul Napoleon had declared that the Revolution was at an end, the right to worship had been restored. There were signs of prosperity in fine new houses, grand carriages and well-dressed people, but the poor were still to be seen everywhere and, whenever the coach stopped for a change of horses, there were just as many beggars running forward for alms as there had ever been.

They stayed at hostelries every night. Louise paid for everything, as Fernand’s purse appeared to have emptied. She guessed that the loan he had raised on the strength of fetching a rich wife home from America had finally run out. It gave her an advantage, as it enabled her always to take a room for Josette and herself and another for him without his being able to do anything about it. As Fernand would not eat with a servant, he always had a separate table, while Louise and Josette ate together. The coachman saw to his own sleeping and eating arrangements, which was usually in the stable-loft with others of his trade.

At last they reached Bordeaux, where they stayed overnight, for until the seal was removed from the Château de Montier they could not enter it. In the morning, Louise looked out at the familiar street below and was able to see the house where she and Delphine had hidden in the attic while they waited for a ship to take them to safety. It saddened her that their good friend was no longer there.

At the government office there were a number of other returned émigrés waiting ahead of Louise and Fernand when they arrived. She had known that he, as her husband, would be expected to accompany her, and she had to tolerate his presence. He was in a surprisingly amiable mood and several times he rubbed his hands together as if in anticipation of gaining a hold on the château at last. After a long wait their turn finally came. The official, a beak-nosed man with bushy eyebrows, was seated at his desk, and seemed harassed by all the work in hand. He waved them impatiently to two chairs.

‘There are so many of you émigrés returning home these days that there’s no end to applications,’ he said to her, taking her papers from her to study them. ‘There’s a positive flood coming from England now. Were you there, Citoyenne? Oh, no, I see you went to America. A great number went there too.’ The papers rustled as he went through them. ‘Yes, everything is in order. Now I have some declarations that you must sign.’

Louise read each one carefully before adding her signature. Everything was very straightforward in these more lenient times. Then the official stood to study the labels on rows of keys, before he located the right ones. He snipped off a large label and held out the heavy ring of keys to her, together with the important document that released her property and land back to her. Although Fernand’s hand had shot out to receive both, the official ignored him and gave them to Louise as the rightful owner.

She put them safely away in her purse as she and Fernand left the office. The incident had been encouraging. In this new France the official had not treated her as her husband’s chattel, but as an individual in her own right. So, women had kept their first tentative claim on equality. It had shown itself prior to the Revolution and the turbulent times had failed to destroy it.

At her bankers, Louise was given bad news. Her fortune, which she had inherited from her father, had been forfeited during the Revolution and there was no hope of her ever having any of it returned to her. Fernand, who had been reassured in Paris before leaving for America that his wife’s fortune could be reclaimed, had turned white to the lips. His disappointment exploded into a terrible rage while Louise faced the fact that all she had was what she had earned in America. It would mean being careful in her spending until her land was productive again. Before they left her bankers she arranged for Fernand to have a modest income of his own out of what she had, but he declared it to be totally inadequate and stormed out of the building.

On the drive out of the town Louise was tense, not from Fernand’s exhausting show of temper, since she expected it to be the first of many, but through not knowing quite how she would find her beloved birthplace. She and Josette were on their own in the coach, as Fernand had hired a riding horse for his immediate use and, still in a livid mood, rode ahead.

When they reached the bend in the road that would bring the château into sight, Louise held her breath. Then, as it appeared ahead of her in its setting of majestic trees and wide lawns, presently wildly overgrown, she gave a long soft sigh at its beauty. In spite of being sadly neglected, its old stone walls were still a pale amber in the sunshine, entwined sturdily by the curling branches of the ancient wisteria, which in a few weeks would be covered by a soft cloud of purple blossom. Although wooden boards had been nailed across the great double doors of the porticoed entrance and ivy had flourished unchecked to overhang the tall windows, some of which had panes cracked and broken, the grace and dignity of the house, with its high, sharply sloping grey roof, remained singularly untouched.

While the coachman unloaded the trunks, Fernand, who had come prepared with tools he had bought in town, prised off the wooden boards across the doorway and ripped away the seal. As soon as the doors were cleared, Louise went up the stone steps to try the largest key on the ring. It turned at once as if welcoming her return.

Thrusting open the doors, she swept in. The sunshine, flooding through to throw her shadow before her, became cloudy with dancing dust motes and set sparkling a scatter of fragments on the marble floor. She picked up a shard and realized it was crystal. Glancing upwards, she saw that the great chandelier had been viciously damaged and was hanging dangerously by a single chain.

Warning the others, she stepped quickly out of danger herself and stood looking about her, reflected many times over in the smashed mirror, under which a fine antique side table had once stood. All the carved chairs, which had been set against the hall walls for as long as she could remember, were gone. As her gaze travelled towards the stairs, she saw with a sinking heart that the family portraits on the wall had been slashed, the canvas hanging from some of the frames like pointed petals.

Behind her, Josette exclaimed in sympathy. ‘Oh,
madame
!’

Turning abruptly, Louise went into the room that had always been known as the White Salon, because of the ivory silk of its panelled walls. In the gloom she dodged furniture to start opening the interior shutters and folding them back. Then she turned to survey the room. As far as she could tell, all the elegant chairs were still there, as well as the sofas, but some were broken beyond repair and the silk brocade of the upholstery had been ripped by knives, the stuffing sticking out. The paintings, mostly landscapes, were either slashed or had been kicked about the floor, light patches on the torn silk-panelled walls showing where they had hung. Louise clenched her fists, rage taking over from shock at the senseless vandalism. Fernand looked into the room, swore at the state of it and went out again.

Josette, previously instructed as to the layout of the upper rooms, had led the baggage-laden coachman up the stairs and was directing him as to where he should deposit the trunks and boxes. Downstairs, Louise went from room to room. Not a single musical instrument had been left in the music salon, and there were only empty spaces where the harp and the harpsichord had stood. She thought of how often she had accompanied Delphine’s flute-playing there. Even the carpet had been taken, and a stain on the wall, similar to others she had already seen, showed where somebody had urinated. The dining room was equally bare of furniture, as was the Green Salon, where the lovely carpet which had given the room its name was missing.

It proved to be the same in every downstairs room. Even the kitchens had not escaped, the copper saucepans gone from their hooks, and cupboards left open where the hungry soldiers had searched for food. In the garden room, dead plants lay on the terracotta tiles amid smashed pots and scattered earth, but the charming furniture, specially designed for it, was gone.

She had left the library to last, cherishing a faint hope that the illiteracy of the looters would mean that the books had escaped their clutches. But, on the threshold, she halted in amazement while Fernand pushed past her to open the shutters. Even in the gloom, all the furniture appeared to be in place, and the red patterned Turkish carpet was soft under her feet. But as light poured into the room, her hopes for the safety of the treasured volumes were dashed as the stark emptiness of the wall-to-ceiling bookshelves was revealed. Yet the library table was in its place, as were the antique chairs, and a portrait of her father as a boy of ten still gave a vibrant touch of life and colour to the room. Only the ebony clock and the silver candlesticks, which had always stood on the mantel, were no longer there.

‘Why should the clock, candlesticks and the books have been stolen, but nothing else?’ she asked in bewilderment.

Before Fernand could reply, Josette popped her head into the room. ‘Good news, madame! Except for one of the bedrooms, nothing else seems to have been touched anywhere upstairs.’ She vanished again to give further instructions to the coachman.

‘It seems as if the looters were stopped before they wreaked further havoc,’ Fernand remarked coldly as he strolled about the room.

Louise gave a nod. ‘Perhaps, after an immediate orgy of destruction in the hall and the White Salon, the soldiers’ minds turned to thieving until an officer arrived to put a stop to it.’

‘Taking the clock and the silver for himself, perhaps.’

‘But the books?’ Louise shook her head despairingly. ‘So many rare editions among them. There were hundreds. I suppose they were burnt.’

Fernand shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Some of the revolutionary leaders had the foresight to make sure that the valuable libraries of our land were not destroyed in the mayhem. It’s my guess that the books here were taken away en bloc and put into safe keeping. It’s possible these days to apply to have a collection returned. I’ll look into it next time I’m in Bordeaux. We should be able to raise funds by selling the most valuable volumes.’

Louise made no comment, only thinking to herself how different their attitudes were as to what constituted the value of a book. In the hall she found the coachman waiting to be paid. He was eager to get to Bordeaux in the hope of picking up more returning émigrés from a ship there before starting for home again. When he had gone, Louise went upstairs and along the gallery into the room she had first taken for her own after her flight home from Versailles. It had been her mother’s room. Josette was already making up the four-poster bed.

‘I found these clean sheets and blankets in the linen room. They’re not damp at all, but I’m not sure about the mattress here or in the other bedrooms. I’ll give them all a good airing tomorrow, so it will mean only a layer of blankets across the bed-slats tonight.’

Louise smiled. ‘After the discomfort of the hostelries’ beds, I won’t miss a mattress for one night.’ She went into the dressing room. All the garments she had left behind were still there. She took out a gown of green velvet and shook it from its folds. How dated it looked compared with the high-waisted gowns being worn now! After glancing at other garments and opening and shutting a few drawers to see what she had left in them, she came back into the bedroom.

Josette, smoothing out a sheet, glanced sideways at her. ‘The Marquis has told me that he will have the neighbouring room to this one.’

Louise glanced across at the communicating door to what had been her father’s bedroom. It was as spacious as her own and had the same fine view from the windows. Without a word she went to lock the door. She had difficulty in turning the key and thought to herself that it was probably the first time it had ever been used.

‘I’ll get help in from the village in the morning,’ she said, brushing away a cobweb from the toilet table. ‘The whole house must be scrubbed and cleaned from the cellars to the attic, although afterwards some of the rooms will have to be closed up again until they can be refurbished.’