The Vintners Luck

by Elizabeth Knox

  Sobran sat very still, watched the women gently raise a limp arm to wash the armpit. He watched them unbutton Léon’s breeches and pull them off, untie the drawstring on Léon’s drawers, strip him naked, then turn him tenderly on to his stomach to wash the liquid mess from his backside.

  Agnès stood hugging the ewer. Tears dripped from her chin into the clean water.

  The priest at Aluze would not let Léon lie in the churchyard. He said he relied on Sobran – of all people – not to prove a hypocrite by quarrelling with the laws of the Holy Church. It was simply wrong for the saved to wait out Time beside the unshriven. There were no exceptions.

  Sophie pleaded with tears pouring from her eyes. Céleste stepped back from the priest and held her skirt, as though at mud or a mess of dung, then she folded her arms and looked through the priest, the whitewashed sacristy wall behind him and on, it seemed, through the little field of memorials. The priest was rocked by this look – not knowing that this was how she disengaged herself from all discussions about what was proper.

  Antoine said, ‘Father, Léon was with the priests for four years. He went to church all his life. To this church for over thirty years.’

  The priest nodded, he understood this, and that the Jodeau family had paid for the new statue of Saint Barbara that stood near the altar. Nevertheless, ‘It’s impossible,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I won’t hear any more arguments.’

  ‘Old Father Lesy would have known how to bend the rules.’ Sobran made an enclosure of his hands, then opened them, letting something out.

  ‘Not in this matter. There may be a place for unchristened infants within the church walls, but you must be content with –’ and the priest pointed through the side window of the sacristy and across the boundary at the back of the church, where the wall was broken by brambles. ‘Your brother’s casket can rest beneath the lychgate, and I will pray over him. We will ring the bells – in honour of your family, Monsieur Jodeau – but your brother will be buried outside the churchyard.’

  If this was his final word, Sobran told the priest, then he must know that Léon’s funeral would be the final occasion on which he, Sobran, would enter this church, alive or dead. Having said this, Sobran put his hat on and walked from the sacristy, through the church, head still covered, and out into the sun.

  ‘If you don’t let Léon rest in the churchyard Sobran won’t be the only one who stays away,’ Antoine said. He took Sophie’s arm, then Céleste’s, turned both women and followed his brother-in-law.

  Léon Jodeau was interred in a dry gulf of a grave cut from among the brambles beside three listing wooden gravemarkers outside the church wall.

  Three days after the funeral, Sobran, Baptiste, Martin, and Antoine arrived and began to dismantle the stone wall behind the church. Antoine’s sons turned up with a cartload of stones. By noon the men were rebuilding the wall from both its back corners. They were joined by Sobran’s friends from the village. All the men were stripped down to shirtsleeves and sweating profusely. Sophie, Céleste and her elder daughters came with a lunch of bread, cheese, onions, sausage and bottles of Jodeau-Kalmann vin bourru. While the men rested the priest came out of the church – for the third time that day – and tried to dissuade them from their task. He became angry and cursed at them. Antoine offered him a drink.

  At one o’clock the work recommenced, and by sunset a new wall stood finished. The line between consecrated and unconsecrated was now marked only by the higher level of the ground that, within the churchyard for centuries, had risen the way that water in a tub will when a body enters it, the earth slowly displaced by the mortal remains of dead generations. The flower-covered mound of Léon’s grave was surrounded by more turned earth, where the men had razed the brambles.

  In the last light the workers took off their heavy gloves, put picks and spades back in Antoine’s cart, washed at the horse trough by the lychgate, put their jackets and hats back on, shook hands and dispersed.

  Sobran saw Paul de Valday, mounted, on the road that ran by the long rolling slope to the south of Vully. He gave the sickle vine-knife back to the harvester to whom he’d been offering a lesson in cutting stems, raised his hat from his head and waved it at Paul. The Comte reined the horse in, then dismounted. In a moment one of the harvesters had put down a basket and stepped up to hold the horse’s bridle. Paul met Sobran halfway along the row, uncovered his head as he came up and peered at his vintner with some trepidation.

  ‘Why won’t your mother see me?’ Sobran asked, without politeness or preamble.

  Paul put his hat back on and took Sobran’s arm, turned him so that they walked away from the main body of the harvesters. ‘You’re wiser than I am,’ Paul said.

  ‘Don’t butter me up.’

  Paul coloured. ‘I don’t like to say.’ He glanced about at the nearer workers who were bent over their heaped baskets of fogged red grapes. ‘By the way, I hear I’m to congratulate you and your wife –’

  Sobran was silent.

  ‘Again,’ Paul said, provoked by this lack of reaction.

  Sobran’s face was set and completely unreadable.

  Paul pressed what he saw as an advantage, lowering his voice.

  ‘Mother is ill because she lost a child. It was very early and, I’m told, as easy as these things ever are. But she’s disappointed.’

  ‘And this accounts for the rumour?’

  ‘What rumour, Monsieur Jodeau?’

  ‘That she walked into the river one morning six weeks ago, trying to drown herself.’

  It was Paul’s turn to be silent. He had hoped Sobran would react with more personal interest to the news of his mother’s miscarriage.

  ‘Did she miscarry before or after she walked into the river?’

  ‘After,’ Paul muttered. ‘It was the Baron’s coachman saved her. Baron Lettelier knew before I did. The news had to pass through the whole serving staff to my old nurse and then to me.’ Paul stepped in front of Sobran and faced him. ‘I don’t know why she did it. She’s said she won’t see you. And she didn’t send condolences to your brother’s funeral. When she heard Monsieur Léon had killed himself she laughed. She laughed and said, “God proposes, man disposes.”’ It clearly distressed Paul to repeat this blasphemy, but he was making a brave show.

  Sobran covered his face with both hands and rubbed vigorously.

  ‘I knew you would know what she meant.’ Paul sounded resentful and envious.

  ‘All the more reason for her to give me an audience.’

  ‘She left this morning for the spa at St Florentin. It’s too hot here, the Baron says. The Baron is a Christian man – he dislikes the spectacle of suffering. Baptiste tells me that Madame Jodeau is at the spa in the company of your sister. You must be worried about Madame – who is some years past forty.’

  ‘Be careful, Paul.’

  But Paul went on waspishly, angry with all his elders and their secrets. ‘When I told Mother you were expecting another child – in the way of good news following bad – your brother’s death, I mean – she said that you must think you’re Noah, with a divine charter to repopulate the pays.’

  ‘All right, stop now. It’s not your place to repeat your mother’s insults or to remark on the age of my wife.’

  Paul shut his mouth tightly, went quite white around the nostrils, then said, ‘I repeat her insults to provoke you into an explanation.’

  Sobran tried to put a hand on Paul’s shoulder but the young man struck it aside. ‘You’re endangering her life!’

  ‘Sir –’ Sobran used the honorific, hoping it would pull Paul back into line, ‘your mother and I are not lovers. And we haven’t quarrelled – if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  Paul had thought the lost child was Sobran’s rather than the Baron’s – and that his mother was envious of Céleste Jodeau’s pregnancy because of her own loss, and simply upset at evidence of the continued marital congress between M. Jodeau and his wife. Now Sobran denied the relationship. St
ill, Paul was sure of one thing. He said, ‘You are the cause of her unhappiness.’

  Sobran shook his head. ‘It’s only a short time since she was so near to death. And you should consider her feelings about the damage to her womanhood, the operation and then this miscarriage – one slight on top of another, so to speak.’

  ‘No, she is unhappy about you, Jodeau. The whole pays hangs on your moods, whims and opinions. Because of you Anton Wateau has built a wine cellar and sold his cows and taken up the plum trees his great-grandfather planted and put a good flat field to vines. Because of you Saint Barbara is further forward in the church than Saint Vincent – patron of wine. A gunner’s saint – one of your homages to Kalmann, I suppose. Because of you, the Lizet and Laudel families haven’t been to church for over a month – even the women. Don’t tell me you have no idea of your influence.’

  ‘I believe I know what ails your mother – which is why I should not be prevented from seeing her.’

  ‘Too late. And – yes – you know, and then you lie to me. “Damage to her womanhood”!’ Paul spat. ‘You might as well pat me on the head. Do you think you can make me believe that my mother would try to injure herself over a matter of a marred figure?’

  Sobran saw that Paul was attracting attention. The near harvesters were looking through the vines, like fox cubs peering out of a thicket. He could feel their eyes, and appetite. ‘Paul,’ he said, but didn’t stem the flow.

  ‘My great-uncle was your patron, but who have I got in my pocket? Only household servants, old women, young girls, the lame old man who keeps the gardens, one or two of the grooms perhaps. You’ve made me a tidy fortune, but I have – what? – Latin, German, fashionable hats, a mother who won’t tell me why she’s in despair and –’

  Sobran saw Paul had reached some decision.

  ‘ – and Agnès tells me she’s going to become a nun because her uncle is a suicide and her mother is mad!’

  ‘Well,’ Sobran was droll, ‘Agnès will have to go back to church first in order to find a vocation.’ He waved a hand at the Comte. ‘Get back on your horse and go and visit her. Pay court, by all means. Just stop shouting at me.’ Sobran turned away, saying, ‘I guess your mother will keep.’

  Paul put his hat on, then tore it off again, threw it down and crushed it into the dry chalk. Then, much to the entertainment of the harvesters, he strode back to the road cursing. He snatched the bridle from the man who held it, mounted and galloped off.

  Aurora sat on a stone seat in a sunny alcove surrounded by a yew hedge trimmed in imitation of masonry. She could hear a fountain, and see its highest tossed drops above a line of clipped peach trees. She’d been reading – Hugo again – but had turned the book down on her lap, and taken a wedge of bread out of her pocket to eat. She crumbled the crust for the birds, threw the crumbs in a fan across the gravel and on to the stone seat opposite. Aurora looked at this seat, its lustrous marble, and imagined it occupied. And, in imagining a figure there instead of air, she placed the sum at the end of an equation that had pleased her more unsolved. For if there was an angel there was a God. And now, when she thought of her atheism, she took a scoop of air, as she did when she said ‘my breast’ of the large melted scar where her breast had been.

  Aurora heard footsteps, of two walking but not talking. She recognised Sophie Laudel and Céleste Jodeau despite the bonnets that blinkered both women. They turned onto her walk and saw her. Sophie instantly smiled and raised a hand, as civil and calm as she’d been when they had met in the baths the day before. Aurora politely invited them to sit, and they did so, both tilting their parasols to keep the sun from their faces. The sun shining through the beaded fringe of Céleste’s parasol made bright lacework on the heavily pleated bodice of her dress. Céleste was stately already in the loose gowns of expectant motherhood.

  They had been on the river after lunch, Sophie told Aurora, but hadn’t taken the waters yet today. Sophie hoped for an excursion to the salt spring tomorrow.

  Céleste said she felt a little chilled. Would Sophie go back to their rooms to fetch her shawl? This sobered Sophie considerably. Her animation completely deserted her. She was neither embarrassed nor fearful, Aurora saw. She just met Aurora’s eyes, and her look weighed and measured. Then she excused herself and went off on Céleste’s errand.

  Madame Jodeau closed her parasol, pushed its spike into the gravel and crossed her hands on its handle. Her bonnet was like the hood on a storm lamp, her eyes as bright as bull’s-eye glass with a flare burning behind. She asked Aurora, ‘Who is your tailor?’

  Aurora named the man in Autun of whose provincial patterns the Baron complained.

  ‘You must pass on my compliments on his art,’ Céleste said, eyeing Aurora’s chest.

  ‘Yes – no lack evident,’ Aurora said. ‘He’s highly skilled. And discreet.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Céleste inclined her head.

  ‘Please accept my congratulations, Madame Jodeau,’ Aurora said.

  Céleste smiled, touched her stomach. ‘A happy burden. Though it’s always a bother in the hot weather.’

  ‘When does your confinement begin?’

  ‘February. The little thing won’t see the sun till its christening.’

  ‘How will you manage that? The christening, I mean. Paul tells me Monsieur Jodeau and the priest have fallen out.’

  ‘We’ll go to Chalon-sur-Saône for the christening. Another goddaughter for Aline.’

  Aurora’s hair prickled. She was cold inside her clothes, cold in the sunlight.

  ‘Oh no – that’s right – Aline is dead,’ Céleste said, as placid as water shortly before it freezes. She mused for a minute, then said, ‘Perhaps you would like to do us the honour?’

  ‘Certainly, Madame. But you must know there’s been, not a quarrel, but a degree of coldness between me and the Church for a number of years. Consequently I am no one’s godmother.’

  ‘You were all but in your generosity to Sabine when you sponsored her schooling.’

  Aurora acknowledged this with a nod.

  ‘And since you are an unconventional woman I’m sure you won’t mind that it isn’t my husband’s child.’

  Aurora sat with her hands in her lap and felt like a jointed fowl. She caught her book as it slipped. ‘Pardon?’ she said.

  ‘Well. That’s settled.’ Céleste touched her own stomach, smiled. ‘Lucky infant.’

  Aurora could feel her lips moving, but they had no muscle and no words emerged.

  Céleste got up. ‘Here’s Sophie with my shawl.’ She opened her parasol and set its handle on her shoulder. ‘I know my husband shares everything with you, Baroness. So I hope you don’t mind if I take the liberty of sharing this one small secret.’

  Sophie arrived, settled the shawl around Céleste’s shoulders. Céleste gave her sister-in-law her arm. ‘Shall we walk on, dear?’

  Sophie studied Aurora’s pale face, said, ‘Excuse us, Baroness. I’m sorry.’

  Céleste, beaming and majestic, pretended not to hear. She drew her sister-in-law away along the walk.

  No one communicated. Sobran told himself that Aurora could keep. Aurora composed letters, but only in her imagination. She was not on hand for questioning, though Sobran and Antoine both had questions. Aurora went from St Florentin to the Baron’s estate and thence to Paris, meaning to stay all winter. Paul joined them, leaving Agnès still unkissed. Céleste burgeoned, and went with her younger daughters to Chalon-sur-Saône and Sabine. Sobran moved a third of his books and clothes to his room above the cuverie at Vully, and left his elder sons in charge all week at his own vineyard. He wasn’t waiting for Aurora to return, or for domestic peace, the last child’s safe birth, or his breach with the Church healed. He was waiting for summer, for the one with whom he could share Léon’s letter.

  On a blustery night in early December Sobran had finally fallen asleep despite the noise, snow hissing as dry as salt against the shutters, and the wind’s smothered complaints. Later he was aw
ake. The wind was louder and a shutter came unfastened and struck, not, it seemed, on the stone sill, but with a soft thump, then crashed back against the stonework. Sobran heard knocking, knuckles on the shutters. He got out of bed and went to the window. One shutter was open and beyond the glass Sobran saw the gloss of snow and midnight, then his angel, holding on to architrave and sill with one hand and two tensed bare feet, his black hair whipped every-which-way like a tattered banner. Sobran opened the window. The other shutter came loose, swung out, and knocked Xas from his perch. Xas fell into the snow in the courtyard, then sprang up again immediately, leaving a few depressions and a blur, nothing like the snow-angels children make.

  Xas came in the window, brushing by Sobran, wet where his skin was warm, hair and feathers stiff with frost.

  Sobran caught a window, closed it, then the other, with its two cracked panes.

  Xas was already stretched on the floor, facing the hearth and blowing on the embers. Now that the shutters were closed his breath gave the only illumination, a local rosiness that came and went as he blew. Sobran found a flint and a candle. ‘I’m not going to get up,’ Xas said, ‘and drag my wings. The ceiling is too low. I’m here because I wasn’t going to wait until we were being watched again.’ He began to feed the fire, did so delicately and with interest, as if it were an animal whose tastes and appetite he meant to discover. ‘We should move our night. Say to the next. Even that would throw them, probably, and still fall within the weeks you customarily pack your family off to anywhere out of sight of Baptiste Kalmann’s “headstone”.’