The Vineyards of Champagne

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Are you serious?”

  “I thought you might want to replace the memory of what happened the last time with a nicer one.”

  Rosalyn smiled. “That’s sweet, though the overriding memory is of you and Emma saving me, and then making me tipsy on champagne for the first time in my life.”

  “In French we have a saying: Bien fol qui ne s’enivre jamais. It is only a fool who never gets drunk.”

  Rosalyn laughed. “That’s a handy excuse for indulgence, isn’t it? So, have you ever written poetry yourself?”

  “As a young man, I poured my heart out on the page on more than a few occasions. Wretched stuff. True ‘dreck,’ I think is the word?”

  “That is a word, yes. But I’ll bet it wasn’t as bad as all that.”

  “Oh, I assure you, it was. I hate to admit it, but I think farming is a far better use of my time. And reading, of course.”

  Upon arriving at the champagne house, Jérôme spoke briefly with a security guard, and they were permitted into the reception area. They crossed over to the entrance to the caves. Descending the steps with Jérôme by her side, dressed in their costumes, felt so different from when she had come by herself, for the party. She felt different. And she saw the caves in an altered light now, knowing what she knew.

  “You told me Lucie’s family stayed in a niche called Dakar,” Jérôme said. “It’s down this way. I have a torch.”

  The crayère’s main corridors were lit overhead, but many of the smaller tunnels were dark. He switched on his flashlight as they got farther away from the stairs, turning this way and that.

  “Like I was telling you before, all kinds of valuable things were hidden in these caves, to keep them from the invaders.”

  Jérôme squatted to show her a rough opening in the wall, close to the floor. It was just big enough for a person to crawl through.

  “This opens up to a private stash, for example. Marius showed it to me.”

  He handed her the flashlight; she crouched down and pointed the beam through the hole. Inside were stacks of ancient-looking wine bottles, covered in grime.

  “This is amazing. How did they find it?”

  “Over time, the old mortar tends to crumble under these damp conditions, so occasionally bricks fall and walls open up.”

  “And they just leave the bottles there like that?”

  “They’ll categorize it when they get the chance; according to Marius, it’s not a priority. There’s no urgency to remove the bottles. Where would they even put them?”

  “Is the champagne still drinkable?” she asked as they continued farther along the dark corridor.

  “Highly unlikely. Red wine can age well for decades, but not champagne. If it’s drinkable at all, it might taste a bit like a sherry, or some kind of fortified wine, but not like champagne as we know it. The champagne houses usually use such old bottles for display, though occasionally they’ll auction one off to raise money for charity. It’s a novelty item rather than an enjoyable wine. This way.”

  They turned to the right, and a large sign attached to the wall told them they had arrived at Dakar.

  The niche didn’t look any different from the others in this stretch of the caves; it was dark, and dank, and filled with bottles. Jérôme cast the flashlight beam over the whole area, but there wasn’t much to see.

  “It’s sort of . . . disappointing,” Rosalyn said.

  “You haven’t seen the best part,” he said, leading her around the stack of bottles, where they had to squeeze by. He shone his light on the wall. Etched into the wall was: “La Famille Maréchal: Raymond, Eugénie, Lucie, Henri.” And below this, in crude letters: “et Topette.”

  Rosalyn ran her fingers over the carving. “Incredible.”

  “This is the family you’ve been looking for?”

  She nodded. Words failed her. Lucie had lived right here, in this nook, with her family. Rosalyn could practically hear the clicking of Madame Maréchal’s knitting needles, smell the lavender from her sachets and ointments. She imagined Lucie breezing in, exhausted but satisfied after bringing in the harvest.

  She used her phone to snap some pictures.

  “And look,” Jérôme said, pointing the beam of light toward the back of the niche. “Do you see the carving there?”

  “Yes! It’s . . . a rabbit? In a waistcoat, with a little watch . . . like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.”

  “That’s what it looks like to me, too.”

  Rosalyn squinted her eyes and inspected the cave closely. “Wait a minute—look at that, right next to it. Do you see what I see?”

  Jérôme peered closely. “This area appears to have been walled up.”

  Rosalyn nodded. “Do you think there are more bottles behind there?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Or . . . Émile’s letter mentions he and Lucie spent their wedding night in the attic of Dakar, ‘through a rabbit’s hole.’ Maybe this is what he meant!”

  Their eyes met.

  “How good a friend is Marius?” Rosalyn asked.

  “Do you mean, would he call the police if we punch a hole in his wall?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  Chapter Fifty-one

  As Jérôme had mentioned earlier, it was not difficult to open a hole in a bricked-up wall when the century-old mortar had turned crumbly over the years.

  As soon as Jérôme had opened up an area large enough to look through, Rosalyn crouched down and pointed the flashlight beam every which way.

  “There’s a space back here, for sure,” said Rosalyn, “and I see some steps.”

  “Stand back and I’ll widen it a bit more so we can crawl through.”

  Once they were able to squeeze through, they carefully climbed the crude, shallow steps. At the top, Rosalyn jumped at the sight of a squat, chubby gargoyle.

  “I’ll bet that came from the cathedral,” Jérôme murmured.

  They arrived at an opening that was nothing more than a small, claustrophobic loft. Shallow ledges held very old candle stubs, encrusted with dust, and a broken piece of mirror.

  But Lucie’s humble little “attic” also held a treasure.

  The walls had been decorated with bas-reliefs of sirens and sailing ships, clouds and trees and flowers. There were three bottles of champagne, one from each vintage that Lucie helped to harvest. In a folded pile were a heavy wool sweater, a balaclava, and several pairs of socks, all suffering from mold and rot. Next to these was Émile’s military kit, sent to Lucie as his wife, along with the official notice of his death.

  Rosalyn snapped more photographs with her phone, and then she took the lid off a small wooden box and took a picture of the contents.

  Within were six bundles of letters tied with twine, all from Doris Whittaker. One letter from Lucie to Émile, penned after he died, had been added to the stack. Unfortunately, the paper was in terrible condition, spotted with mold and falling apart.

  “Doris’s letters. At long last.”

  Tucked into the side of the box was a small book of stories by Edgar Allan Poe, translated by Charles Baudelaire. The frontispiece was dedicated “with much affection” to Lucie Maréchal, with a dramatic signature Rosalyn would recognize anywhere:

  Émile Paul Legrand

  “I wonder what finally happened to poor Émile,” Rosalyn said softly. The space was cramped and not appealing to a claustrophobe, but there was nonetheless something sacred about it. It felt like a chapel. “Did I tell you? We thought he had died in the war—Lucie had received official notification—but it was a mistake. He survived with severe injuries, but no one here knew the truth until after the war.”

  “That wasn’t uncommon. My grandmother’s father was a veteran of the Great War. She told me he was referred to as an ‘unknown soldier’ because he was lost for a while due
to his injuries, and only reunited with his family several months after the end of the war.”

  Rosalyn stilled. “What was his name?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not the historian my father was. I never met my great-grandfather, only heard stories. He was originally an apiarist—a beekeeper—but his family’s farm in Reims was destroyed in the war, so he worked for one of the big champagne houses for a number of years until he was able to save enough to buy land here in Cochet, which became Comtois Père et Fils.

  “Was he missing a hand, by any chance?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Jérôme, could your great-grandfather have been the Émile whose letters we’ve been reading all these weeks?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “We’ve been searching everywhere for more information on what happened to Émile Paul Legrand, but Emma’s research didn’t find any connection to Cochet or the surrounding area.”

  “She was probably looking for the wrong name. My grandmother was one of four girls; the family name wouldn’t have passed on through them.”

  “This could mean you’re Émile’s great-grandson! Do you have a family tree in your library or a family Bible—something that might list his name—to see if I’m right?”

  “We can certainly look. Now, what about these letters? They’re in terrible shape, as bad as the wine.”

  He shone the flashlight through one of the bottles, displaying the sediment floating within.

  “It’s a Victory Vintage,” Rosalyn said. “Even at the time, I think it was more about the making of it than the drinking of it.”

  Rosalyn picked up Lucie’s letter from the top of the stack. It had been written by Lucie to her husband, after she had been told he had been killed. The paper was spotted with mold and falling apart. She held it as gently as she could as she read aloud:

  I shall never believe it. I think I shall go to my grave not believing it. How could someone like you disappear from this earthly plane?

  Since this war began, I have made a game of asking myself: What was the worst moment? The head of the Smiling Angel crashing upon the pavement. The breaking of the blind woman’s teacup. The look on your face at that very last moment, when you turned back to smile at me.

  Never before had you turned back.

  Tears bubbled up and spilled over as Rosalyn reached the end of the letter. Wordlessly, Jérôme put an arm around her and hugged her close. She turned her head and let her tears stain his white shirt.

  “I’m not even crying about Lucie and Émile. It’s that— I don’t know. . . . For some reason, I keep thinking about Dash. He always used to promise me a lifetime of laughter.”

  After a beat, Jérôme said softly, “You Americans are an optimistic people; I suppose we Gauls seem melancholic in comparison. But personally, I don’t believe you can truly appreciate laughter without experiencing tears.”

  She sniffed, pulled back, and looked up at him. “Live the questions, not the answers?”

  He gave her a sad smile. “Rilke was no slouch.”

  “Do you suppose Émile quoted Rilke to Lucie down here, in their little cave?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  She let out a long breath. “I think I’ve been grieving not just Dash’s death, but finding out he wasn’t the person I thought he was, after the fact. That he’d put us into debt, that his grand life was a sham. He even kept his illness from me, at first. Why couldn’t he confide in me? It makes me doubt everything that we shared, everything my life—our life—was, before.”

  Jérôme opened his mouth to speak but hesitated, as though searching for words. “I know it’s nothing like what you’ve been through, Rosalyn, but I grieve the loss of my marriage. It’s difficult letting go of dreams, of what we had—or, more precisely, what I thought we had.”

  “Letting go of the people we used to be.”

  “And embracing the people we are yet to become.”

  The spirits of Lucie and Émile swirled around them as they sat together in that peculiar chapellike vault in the earth, their red capes enveloping them. With her bonnet and his cap, it was easy to imagine they were two lovers from another era sheltering deep beneath the surface of the earth, hiding from their chaperone . . . or the German bombs.

  Rosalyn became acutely aware of Jérôme’s arm around her, his thigh pressing against hers. Ignoring the musty, chilly air of the caves, she focused on his masculine scent: of freshly tilled earth and woody grapevines. She leaned into the warmth of his body, matching her breathing to his, feeling the steady beat of his heart. He was so vital, so alive.

  And so was she.

  Rosalyn tilted her face up to his, and cupped his cheek with her hand, savoring the soft prickle of his whiskers in her palm. He gazed down at her for a long moment before slowly lowering his face to hers.

  They kissed.

  It was the sweetest, gentlest touch. He nibbled at her lips, landed tender butterfly kisses along her cheeks, left a trail of heat as he made his way down to her neck. Her skin tingled under his caresses; something deep down began to awaken. She hadn’t felt anything like this since . . .

  Dash.

  She pulled away. Jérôme went still.

  After a moment, he put his hand over hers. In a voice so soft it made her want to cry, he said: “Stay with me, Rosalyn. Stay here with me. We don’t have to do anything; just stay with me.”

  Breathing heavily, she gazed around Lucie’s hidden attic room, the walls carved with sirens and sailing ships, flowers and trees. Were these things Lucie longed to see and to experience when the war was at last over and she and Émile were reunited? Rosalyn’s heart broke at the thought of a beautiful life cut so very short.

  Don’t think, Rosie. Just let yourself feel. Let yourself live.

  She turned back to Jérôme. His sad eyes, his quiet way. Her attraction to Dash had felt like a lightning bolt, but this was different. This was soft, hushed. Jérôme was safe, and kind . . . and just looking at him made her want him with an animal fierceness she had forgotten she possessed.

  Leaning toward him, seeking his heat, she sank into his embrace once more. She kissed him, this time deepening the connection, allowing herself to experience what she had denied for years now: the yearnings and desires for connection, for sensual pleasure. The aching hunger for the touch of a man’s hands, and for all the wild, untamed sensations they elicited. She let herself go, embracing aspects of herself she had hidden—and denied—for so long.

  When Jérôme eased back onto the little chalk floor of the strangely poetic attic of Dakar, Rosalyn followed him, tumbling impetuously down the rabbit hole.

  * * *

  Much later they ascended the main stairs of the crayères, climbing the hundred sixteen steps, leaving the caves behind.

  They had agreed to leave everything as they had found it in Dakar’s cave within a cave for the time being; Jérôme would speak with Marius to determine how the winery wished to proceed. Rosalyn hoped that professional archivists might be able to salvage what was left of the letters, and that she would be able to revisit their discoveries soon. She wanted to read through Doris’s letters, especially.

  “There’s one more thing I would like to ask from you,” said Jérôme as they left the Pommery cellars and headed back to the festivities.

  “More?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light.

  In truth, her mind was a jumble of contradictory emotions and sensations: the trace of his lips on her skin still tingled, and her limbs were languid and sated, but she felt wildly guilty, even disgusted with herself. Her mind screamed at her, What have you done? More precisely, what had they done?

  She didn’t know how to make sense of it; she wanted to be alone.

  “Let me take you to Paris,” said Jérôme.

  Rosalyn shrugged. “Maybe.”


  “I don’t mean right away. One day.” He paused. “Rosalyn?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Are you okay? Did I say the wrong thing?”

  “It’s not that. It’s . . . I just need to get back to the festival. I can’t believe how late it’s gotten.”

  Back at the plaza in front of the cathedral, they found that their little group from Cochet had dispersed. The feast had become a party as the afternoon turned to evening; strings of lights added a festive touch. They searched for Emma and Blondine and the others, but everywhere Rosalyn turned, it seemed to her that all she saw was Ritchie James, schmoozing vintners and snatching up accounts she should have been trying to secure for Hugh.

  Her stomach clenched. She was on that roller coaster again: from the heights of giddy joy while lying in Jérôme’s arms to feeling guilty and confused and overwhelmed, all at the same time. She glanced up at the strong, bewhiskered jaw of her escort, and remembered the sensation of his mouth on hers, moving down her neck, and then . . . How could she have done what she did? She barely knew this man.

  She fiddled with the silver locket around her neck. She had been unfaithful to Dash, to his memory.

  “Rosalyn, please tell me what’s wrong.”

  “It’s Ritchie James—I can’t stand that guy,” Rosalyn muttered. “He’s probably signing the accounts I should be going after.”

  She chided herself; she hadn’t been fulfilling her responsibilities, had been running after ghosts and exploring the caves with Jérôme. And worse. Even though she had given her notice to Hugh, she was still officially employed as a Small Fortune wine rep, and this festival was the main reason Hugh had sent her to France in the first place.

  “Well, think of it this way: You can always have my business,” Jérôme said with a small smile. “Maybe I should seek representation in the U.S. after all. Or . . . maybe you could stay awhile, and redesign my labels.”

  “All I had to do was sleep with you and you give me your business?”