Bitter Greens

by Kate Forsyth

  He gasped his response into my neck as I collapsed upon him, his hands upon my bare buttocks, rocking me a little as if he could not bear to stop that exquisite motion. ‘Ma chérie,’ he whispered tenderly. ‘Soon to be my little wife.’

  EASTER EGGS

  Versailles, France – April 1686

  I sat with my quill in my hand, the ink drying on the nib, and looked down at the blank white page before me.

  A sort of paralysis had hold of me. I could not write the words, though I knew what I must say: ‘My dearest sister, I write to let you know that I have decided to obey His Most Christian Majesty, the King, and my own conscience, and embrace the One True Faith …’

  I could not bear to think of Marie’s face as she read the words. I could not bear to imagine what she would think of me. I had only seen my sister a few times in the past twenty years, but she was still blood of my blood, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Together, we had listened to stories at our mother’s knee and learnt to read from the Bible. Together, we had seen my mother seized and dragged away, locked up in a convent against her will. Together, we had endured the hard years of our guardian’s rule. We were bound together by something much more potent than time.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, laying down my quill. ‘She will never forgive me.’

  Then I thought of Charles, I thought of the horror of being locked up in prison or burnt at the stake, and I took up my quill again, its feathered plume trembling.

  ‘My dearest sister,’ I wrote tremulously, ink blotching the page with black tears. I wished fervently that I could go on and tell Marie all that was in my heart, my feeling that I had lost God and that God had forgotten me, my fear that my mother had been wrong and that we were not the elect of God but cursed by our own arrogance, my conviction that love was the only thing of worth in this graceless world of ours.

  Yet I did not dare. All mail sent anywhere in the kingdom of France was opened and read by the King’s spies. I would have to write a private letter to my sister as if making a public acclamation before the court, and I could only hope that Marie would understand the necessity.

  It was at that moment I heard a faint scratch at the door. Nanette came in, her hands clenched before her, her face pursed with anxiety. ‘Mademoiselle, a messenger has come from Cazeneuve, bearing gifts from your sister, the Baronne, to celebrate Easter.’

  I stared at her in utter perplexity. We réformés did not celebrate Easter. And Nanette never called me ‘mademoiselle’ unless in company. I looked over her shoulder and saw Bertrand, the man who had been my gaoler in the Bastille, standing behind her, a basket in his hands. Two hard-faced palace guards stood behind him.

  ‘Thank you, Nanette. A parcel from the country is always welcome.’ I rose and went towards Bertrand, who fixed his dark eyes upon my face in some kind of unspoken warning. I smiled at him. ‘How lovely to see you again, Bertrand. Country air seems to be agreeing with you. What has my sister sent me?’

  ‘Eggs.’

  ‘Eggs! Lovely. Let me see.’ I lifted the napkin and saw a dozen gaily painted eggs nestled in straw.

  ‘Those soldiers wanted to search the basket, but Bertrand was worried the eggs would be broken,’ Nanette said in a neutral tone.

  ‘Yes, that would be a shame. A gift from my sister is a precious thing!’

  ‘We need to be sure no treasonous or heretical messages are contained within,’ the soldier said. ‘That man’s a Gascon, and the dragoons have been having a great deal of trouble in Gascony.’

  ‘Indeed? I am sorry to hear that. I don’t think you’ll find anything heretical in a basket of Easter eggs, though.’ I smiled at the soldiers, though my pulse was thudding loudly in my ears.

  ‘Need to check.’

  ‘Well, let me take the eggs out first.’ I put the basket on my bed and sat beside it so my body concealed as much of it as possible. The soldiers craned their necks suspiciously, and I smiled at them and began to carefully remove the painted eggs, one by one. Most had been hard-boiled – I could feel the weight of them in my hand as I lifted them out of the basket – but a few were light as air and I heard a faint rustle from within. I laid them down carefully and then rummaged through the straw. An envelope was hidden within. I tried to draw it out discreetly, but the guards saw it and strode forward at once to seize it, filling the tiny room with their bulk. ‘It’s a letter from my sister,’ I protested as one ripped it open, but they ignored me.

  ‘It says “Happy Easter”,’ the guard said blankly and threw the note back on the bed. They then upended the basket, scattering straw everywhere. There was nothing else to be found.

  ‘Just you look at the mess you’ve made,’ Nanette scolded. ‘You like making work for poor old ladies, do you? Out! Out! Go on, be off with you.’

  As the guards backed out, mumbling apologies, I read the brief message on the card, in my sister’s familiar neat script, then loudly admired the painted eggs. ‘I wonder if my niece helped make them,’ I said to Nanette. ‘She must be quite a big girl by now.’

  The moment the door shut behind the guards, I leapt up and seized the four eggs that had been blown empty. Very carefully, I broke them open and found within tiny scrolls of paper, covered on both sides with miniature script. They had been poked through the holes at either end of the egg, where the yolk and whites had been blown out. As Nanette tidied up the straw, I unrolled the scrolls and found they made a letter, cut into quarters. My sister had written in Garonnais, our local dialect. Drawing near the window, I endeavoured to decipher the tiny handwriting:

  Ma chérie, I write to you in haste, to try and explain news that you will soon no doubt hear. I wish I did not need to tell you this. Théobon and I have recanted. I weep as I write this, and I beg of you to forgive me and try to understand. There has been much burning and bloodshed here in the south. The dragoons have no mercy. A whole parish of réformés was butchered in Bordeaux, women and babies among them. An army descended on Nîmes and there enacted so cruel a dragonnade that the whole city recanted in little more than a day. You can have no concept of the horror of it all. All kinds of cruelties and obscenities are taking place here, and we have no choice except to recant, or flee, and you know I will not abandon the land or the people who have been placed into my care. The Duc de Noailles himself warned my husband that dragoons would be billeted at Cazeneuve if we did not publicly abjure our faith immediately, so that is what we have done. May God have mercy on my soul. I beg you to forgive me, and to have a thought to your own safety, your loving sister, Marie.

  I sat for a long while, holding my sister’s letter in my hand, feeling faint and sick. Then I bent and poked the little scrolls into my lantern. They flared into flame and, in seconds, were gone. Smoke stung my eyes. I found I was weeping. As smoke is driven away, so let God’s enemies be driven away …

  Nanette came and sat beside me, passing me a handkerchief. I mopped my eyes and blew my nose. ‘She has abjured,’ I said.

  ‘It is like the old days,’ Nanette said in miserable bewilderment. ‘I thought such things could never happen again.’

  I looked at Bertrand. ‘Thank you so much for coming. You took a grave risk, carrying such a message for me.’

  He bobbed his head in acknowledgement.

  ‘Are things really so bad in Gascony? What has been happening there?’

  The story he told us had both Nanette and I in tears. Sealed within the artificial world of the royal court, we had known nothing of what was happening in the French countryside. The Huguenots were being maltreated on all sides: fined, flogged, hanged, burnt and stabbed to death. In one village, Bertrand told us, a few hundred réformés had gathered in the winter to christen their newborn babies. Some had travelled a long way, since their own churches had been wrecked or burnt. They found the church barred to them by soldiers, who herded them all into a field and would not permit them to go home until they had all knelt and received absolution from the army chaplain. The réformés refused, even thoug
h it was snowing and bitterly cold. All night, they huddled together in the icy field, singing psalms to keep up their courage. In the morning, all the little newborn babies were stiff and cold, frozen to death on their mothers’ breasts, and many others had died too, mostly the young and the elderly. The réformés were not permitted to bury their dead in consecrated ground, the soldiers flinging the corpses into a ditch by the side of the road.

  ‘Why didn’t they just submit?’ I said, wiping away my tears. ‘Those poor little babies.’

  ‘Life on earth is short and brutal,’ Bertrand said, ‘but the faithful shall live forever in the glory of heaven.’ His eyes were lit with the fervour of a true believer and I looked away, feeling shame, indignation and fear all at the same time.

  ‘Why did they not flee, then?’ I demanded. ‘Surely it’d be better than freezing to death in a field?’

  ‘Many tried,’ Bertrand said. ‘They hunted them down like rabbits and dragged them back. I’ve heard of ladies staining their faces with walnut juice and dressing as peddlers, or pretending to be servants, walking in the mud while their husbands rode, for it’s the women who have suffered the most, you know, soldiers being what they are. Some pretended to be old women, hoping that the soldiers would leave them be, but still had their clothes torn off their backs and the soldiers having their sport with them before they were killed.’

  ‘It’s so terrible.’ Nanette looked more knotted up in her face and body than I’d ever seen her look. ‘What kind of world do we live in?’

  ‘No one dares help any more,’ Bertrand said. ‘There was a man who was guiding people through the Languedoc to the sea and helping them find passage on ships. He was discovered and tortured cruelly before he was hanged. And the poor people he was helping were loaded with chains and forced to march through every village and town for miles around, with the soldiers beating them with whips till their clothes were in tatters and the blood running freely, so everyone could see, before being sent to the galleys. A bishop saw what was happening and tried to stop the soldiers, and so he was sent to the galleys as well.’

  ‘I heard yesterday that the King had sent one of his own councillors to the galleys when he refused to abjure,’ I said. ‘One of his oldest friends!’

  ‘We are laden with chains,’ Nanette said in a voice of heavy resignation. ‘We are driven into the wilderness once more.’

  On Easter Sunday, I prepared myself for my public humiliation by candlelight, dressing myself in a plain dark dress with a simple lace collar.

  ‘At least I’m not expected to wear sackcloth and ashes,’ I said bitterly to Nanette. ‘Or crawl to the cathedral on my knees.’

  The ceremony of abjuration was not to take place at the private chapel at the palace, but at the new church built in the township. A majestic pile, it was nonetheless built low so it would not dominate the town. Only the palace was permitted to do that.

  I was not the only one abjuring my faith that day. The sentencing of the King’s own councillor, Louis de Marolles, to the galleys had caused much shock at court, and many – both courtiers and servants – had decided it would be best to recant as soon and as publicly as possible.

  Nanette was to go with me. We knew the King’s soldiers-of-God would care nothing for her age and frailty, and, besides, although she did not understand why the King should make a law forbidding her to sing the psalms she loved so much and forcing her to worship in a way that made no sense to her, Nanette was at heart a practical woman and had no wish to die a martyr’s death.

  It was dark outside. With Nanette beside me, a woollen shawl draped over her thin shoulders against the sharp nip in the air, I carried my candle through the dark quiet corridors of the palace. Slowly, other réformés joined me. Some looked sulky and recalcitrant, others ashamed. Only a few walked with head held high, or with faces shining with true conviction. I myself was one of those who walked with head lowered, unable to bear the thought of meeting anyone’s eyes. I felt as if my gown had been ripped from my shoulders, as if some hidden part of myself, usually concealed from prying eyes, was now on display to be mocked. All was quiet. Not even the birds had yet begun to sing, and all the church bells were mute. Yet deep inside my head I could hear the echo of long-ago singing.

  Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?

  And whither from thy time shall I flee?

  If I ascend up into the heavens, there thou art;

  If I lie down in the sepulchre, behold! thou art there.

  Should I rise on the wings of the morning,

  Should I make my bed in the depths of the sea,

  Even there thy hand shall lead me,

  And thy right hand shall hold me fast.

  How often had I heard this psalm being sung? Nanette had sung it to me as I drifted into sleep, the cook had sung it as he kneaded the dough, the goose-girl had sung it as she brought the geese home at the end of the day, my mother had read it as a blessing at the beginning of a meal. How many times had I sung it myself, in the small white chapel at Cazeneuve, the voices of everyone I knew singing together, word and note bound together in plainsong, many voices singing as one?

  Tears burnt my eyes. Forgive me, Maman, forgive me, Papa, forgive me.

  The sombre-faced procession walked down the long driveway to the magnificent gilded gates, candles bobbing along slowly. To the east was a streak of red like a sabre cut. A few blackbirds began to warble. I could not remember the last time I was up early enough to hear blackbirds. We went through the gates and into the town. Smoke rose from a few chimneys, and lantern-light shone through the chinks in a few curtains, but otherwise the town was still and dark. I smelt bread baking. Behind me, someone’s stomach grumbled noisily and we all smiled, the sound lightening the grave atmosphere.

  A few more minutes and we were at the church. I steeled my nerve and went through the arched doorway into the nave. It was huge and shadowy and smelt of damp stone and incense. Our wavering candlelight caught glints of gold on all sides. Everything was richly decorated, with paintings and statues and embroidered banners and mosaics everywhere. Nothing could be more different to the Protestant church at Charenton, where I usually went to services, seven miles outside Paris. The King had never allowed a Protestant church to be built within the city walls, of course. Us poor réformés had always had to travel and be uncomfortable for our faith.

  The dawn vigil was being held. Cold and bored, we suffered through it all and then were rocked and shaken by peal after peal of bells, the first time in days that the bells were permitted to ring. There was chanting and many signs of the cross and genuflections, and waving of smoking censers, and choirboys singing and priests intoning, all wearing heavy copes and stoles and surplices and whatnot, much embroidered with gilt thread and strange symbols. Candles glowed everywhere, and the air was thick with smoke and incense. The King came, massive and inscrutable, in clothes more gorgeous and gilded than even the priests’. Françoise was with him, regal in dark purple, plus the Dauphin and his ugly young wife, and a whole crowd of lords and ladies in festive silks. Then came Charles, dressed soberly in brown wool, his face stern and hard. He scanned the pews anxiously. When our eyes met, he smiled. It was like sunshine breaking through a thundercloud. His face was transformed; I was transformed; the whole sombre smoky church was transformed. I smiled back at him, all my heart in my eyes, and felt my head lift and my shoulders straighten. It’s all worth it, to be with him.

  When it came my turn to abjure, I did so with a steady voice and a lifted chin. ‘With sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I detest and abjure every error, heresy and sect opposed to the Holy Roman Catholic Church. I reject and condemn all that she rejects and condemns …’

  I received absolution from the priest, having confessed my sins. I will not say this was easy for me, but I did it. Then I had to take into my mouth the bread of the Eucharist. My body rebelled and I gagged. Somehow, I managed to choke it down. It is only stale bread, I told myself. Beside me, Nanette obediently s
wallowed hers, though her face was so twisted with distaste that her jaw looked dislocated. We sipped the wine a little more willingly – wine is wine, after all – and then it was over. I felt my knees weaken with relief. We were allowed to go back to our pew, and there was a great deal more singing and praying. At last, we were permitted to rise and make our way out.

  Charles found us among the great throng of people. He took my hand. ‘All right?’

  I nodded. ‘I’m glad it’s over.’

  He slipped one arm about my waist, under cover of the crowd, and gave me a little squeeze, then drew away.

  As the congregation all filed out, the King went to the altar and stood, flanked on either side by huge candles set upon ornate golden candlesticks. The light cast a long shadow before him. He looked immense, tall as a giant, with his great stiff wig on his head, his long-tailed coat and his high-heeled shoes. A long queue of people waited to see him; they all looked like frightened children, their backs hunched as if expecting a blow, their skinny hands pressed together in a gesture of appeal. I gazed at them curiously as I passed. They were all marked in some way, with nasty sores and hideous swellings upon their faces and necks and groins. Most were poor, dressed in little more than rags, their limbs pitifully thin. One by one, they were pushed towards the King and made to kneel in his shadow. The King dipped his hand in a golden bowl of holy oil and anointed them swiftly on the brow, saying, ‘Le roi te touche, Dieu te guérit.’ Then the supplicant was given some money and the next shuffled forward, the King repeating the gesture and the words.