by Perrat, Liza
It angers me to hear of the Marquis’s terrible crime. He must be stopped from killing more girls. As a simple scullery maid, I could do nothing, but I am a free woman now, helping my husband run a respectable inn, and thus able to ponder over such injustices.
I know you value your position in that noble house, Claudine, but do you not feel vengeful for your poor carter husband? After my time in Saint-Germain, and the murder of my father at the cowardly hand of a noble, I can no longer passively accept this kind of behaviour. The day I am able, my friend, my revenge shall be savoury, my hand steady, my conscience uncluttered with guilt.
I must hurry back to my husband. It comforts me to know you will be praying with me for his recovery. We cannot lose him.
Yours affectionately,
Victoire
***
Armand was too ill to accompany us to la fête des morts in the cemetery that November, to commemorate our dead.
‘We should not leave him alone for long,’ I said to Léon, as we cleared and groomed the family tombs. ‘I am afraid the fever comes upon him.’
I knelt before the resting place of my siblings and my parents, and crossed myself. ‘We must hurry.’
Back at the farm, I took wormwood tea to Armand for his fever. ‘Sorry we had to leave you,’ I said.
He took sips from the beaker I held. ‘It is only right you tend to our dead, my dear,’ he said in a voice that seemed to come from some distant place.
His wound was still inflamed, and the edges shone a dusky crimson, as if left for days under a hot sun. I recalled what Maman used when a wound became like this, and hurried back to the hearth.
I peeled garlic cloves into boiling water with thyme, then added strips of old linen. As I dabbed around the wound with the garlic solution, I could see he was trying not to flinch with the pain.
I swabbed the sweat from his burning brow, though the poor man shivered under the covers.
‘Pray I die soon, my dear,’ he said, his eyes glittering with the fever. ‘For I have become a burden. With barely enough food for the living, the mouth of the dying is but an obscenity.’
I held his limp hand and we sat in silence.
‘Do you regret returning to Lucie and marrying me, Victoire? You, so young and lovely.’
‘I regret nothing, Armand.’ I squeezed his damp, frail hand. ‘You are a hardworking, pious man, who shows me nothing but kindness. We have a good, happy life together, and for that, I feel only fortunate. Hush now, save your energy to fight the sickness,’ I said, stirring the air about him with slow waves of my fan.
‘I die in comfort, Victoire, knowing you and my son will not be alone. Léon is a good man; he will take care of you.’
My pulse quickened. ‘Don’t speak of such things. You are my husband.’
‘Léon needs a new wife.’
The heat rose to my cheeks. ‘My loyalty to you has never wavered, Armand.’
With what little strength remained in him, Armand clutched my hand. ‘You have been the perfect wife; I couldn’t have asked God for one better.’
***
My dear Victoire,
Oh là là, my child, you must show prudence with your mind of revenge. The Marquis is respected and well connected. To fight against a blue blood is to invite disaster. I would hate to watch the spectacle of your public execution on la place de Grève. I hope you are not serious and you’ll stay safe in Lucie with your good merchant, innkeeper husband.
It bereaves me to hear of the death of Armand’s children. I know you cared for them as if they were your blood, and the love and attention you showed them deserves a high place in the character of the Good Wife. Here in Paris too, many are dead from this outbreak of la tuberculose.
Marie and I pray constantly for Armand’s recovery. Please send me more news soon, but I understand the children, the farm and the inn must occupy all of your day.
We are all still shocked at the murder of the scullery maid. Marie can’t sleep and Roux chases his tail like a mad thing. Another young girl, Margot, who will no doubt lose her innocence before long, replaces the maid.
I have some news I hope brings you a smile. An apothecary by the name of Monsieur Parmentier is, would you believe, trying to convince folk to eat potatoes! “The flesh is good and healthy,” he says, of that suspicious root. He says grain is easily destroyed in wartime, and from storms, hail, even volcanoes (!!), but the potato, growing below ground, is safe.
But doesn’t this apothecary man realise that digesting such root vegetables will only invite some awful phlegmatic disease? Mind you, he must have great influence. He has persuaded the King to give him two acres of land outside Paris on which to grow these potatoes.
If this food situation worsens, Victoire, we may all have to succumb to M. Parmentier’s humble potato, and every other root the good earth pushes up!
Yours affectionately,
Claudine
***
Armand’s fever never truly broke. His wound turned the colour of a toad and gave off a pungent odour. He screamed when the healing woman tried to touch it.
One afternoon a grey mask dropped over his face, one I was afraid no human could lift.
‘What about the hospital, Léon?’ I said.
‘That filthy, airless place, with so many crowded onto the one straw mattress seething with lice and fleas.’ He sighed. ‘If we were wealthy enough to make a charitable donation, we could get my father a bed of his own. Apart from the very rich, Victoire, hospital is only a gateway to the grave. I fear it is time we called Père Joffroy.’
The priest came with his white cloth and candles. Léon brought in the twins and Madeleine, to kiss their father. Armand’s children came too, to say goodbye — a circle of pale faces and watchful eyes full of sadness. Grégoire and Françoise were with them, and I saw how each of them respected his piety, admired his strength and now lamented his death.
Léon was the last to take his father’s hand.
‘Look after her, my son,’ Armand said, his voice no more than a whisper. ‘Take care of them all.’
‘Yes, Papa.’
The two men kissed tenderly and the son left, unable to stay and watch his father die.
For a time, there was no sound, save Armand’s spasms of breath, as he slowly lost his hold on life. His limbs grew cool, his lips white, and his face damp. Yet, through the painful hours, my husband’s eyes never lost their tranquillity, and it seemed I was staring straight into his bared soul.
Scarlet streaks of dawn creased the blue-grey night sky. Armand raised himself slightly, turned his head and gazed outside to the rising sun. His face creased into a strange smile, and he slumped back on the pillows and never spoke another word.
I held his hand until the end, so tightly that when he was asleep at last, I could not draw it away and I remained sitting there, clasping my husband’s cooling hand.
‘Come, Victoire, he is gone.’ Léon’s hand rested on my shoulder. ‘You know it is unsafe for the dead and living flesh to touch each other for long.’
I didn’t reply and I shrugged off Léon’s touch. I could not cry. I could not think, or move. The numbness paralysed me. I felt I had gone somewhere beyond grief, beyond pain. I kept my hold on Armand’s hand as if, that way, he wouldn’t truly leave me.
Madeleine and the twins came running to me; towards their dead father, their cherub faces tilted, their arms outstretched. I didn’t have the strength to pick them up, and I looked away as Léon gathered my children into his arms and took them from the room.
Later, when Léon prised my hand from his father’s, Armand was cold and stiff and marble-grey.
18
Several weeks after we buried Armand, I was sitting in his chair by the hearth, scribbling down my thoughts. I hoped it might take away some of the loneliness, the sensation of being so utterly lost. Now I understood the wretchedness Maman felt when Félicité, Félix and Papa died — la mélancolie that turned her from religion and, ultimate
ly, cost my mother her life.
Slow footsteps approached, but I didn’t have to turn to know whose they were. I recoiled from Léon’s breath, close to my ear.
‘Why do you tremble, Victoire, when I come near? Since Papa died, you’re like some hovering ghost, not with us at all. You must master this grief.’
I shook my head, trying to shrug off the clutter that fogged my mind and made the edges of everything cottony.
‘Adélaïde and Pauline are taking care of the household and your children. The boys and I work the farm, so you have no need to concern yourself about that. As for the inn,’ he said. ‘Well there are so few guests I fear L’Auberge des Anges must close its doors.’
In some chamber of my mind, so distant I could reach only a thread of it, I knew I should be concerned about that, but I felt no sadness. All I felt was something slipping away from me, like when I’d caught a river trout with my bare hand and no matter how tightly I clutched it, the fish slithered, slowly, from my grasp.
‘He’s gone, Victoire,’ Léon said. ‘We are both free now — free to be together. Papa even said as much. That afternoon … at the river, you spoke of divorce. Did you mean if divorce was allowed, you might have considered being with me?’
I could not answer him, and the fervour in his black eyes seared a hole in my flesh.
‘Papa gave us his blessing. What is wrong? You remained loyal to my father — to your affectionate, comfortable marriage, but you cannot deny your real love has always been with me.’
Still I said nothing.
‘You believe you no longer care for anything, Victoire. If only you would let me, just once, into your bed. Let me lie beside you and give you comfort, you might not feel so bereft.’
I did not know what made me rise from my fireside place, and cast my nonsensical jumbles of words aside, but I let Léon guide me to bed.
‘Thank you,’ I said, leaning into the circle of his arms, inhaling his soft whispers. ‘It does feel less … less painful.’
‘I promised my father I’d take care of you, remember?’
Léon smiled, and I could not bring myself to tell him that beyond the sensation of unburdening myself, there was nothing more. The passion, the unbearable ache, I’d always felt for him had vanished along with his father.
***
The snow stole into Lucie one early December night like a silent seductress. It sculpted the Monts du Lyonnais into a dizzying snowscape. It embraced the vineyards, draped itself across fallow fields and vines, and kissed the naked limbs of the trees. Seven days of heavy falls took us into 1784.
When the snow stopped, a violent north wind flared up and blew for three weeks. I’d never known such cold that split large trees like flimsy paper and froze wheat and oat seeds underground.
The air crackled and froze the Vionne River so deeply that carts crossed it with no fear of breaking the ice. Birds hit by the chill in mid-flight plummeted to the ground and the frigid air struck down passing journeymen, soldiers and beggars, along the roadside.
Madeleine, Blandine and Gustave gave me great comfort through that winter as I read to them and watched them play together, warm and safe beside the hearth.
‘Two of the cows are dead,’ Léon said. ‘We must bring the rest of the animals indoors, even the barn and stables are too cold.’
So we hauled them all into the house — the two remaining cows, the horse, the pigs, the fowl and the sheep.
‘Villagers help each other through hard times,’ Léon said, and just as Armand would have done, he brought the newly destitute people from the countryside around Lucie, whose unheated homes were exposed to the wind. He also brought Noëmie’s family from their hut in the woods.
It made me think of Père Joffroy, when he gave us the church room, and I welcomed those worse off than us into the warmth of our spacious inn room.
‘The savants say it is all because of this volcano,’ the blacksmith said, as man and beast huddled around our fireplace. ‘They say the temperature has gone as low as it possibly can and predict the harshest winter, with permanent frost.’ He spread his fingers and rubbed his hands close to the flames. I would have liked to offer him, and the others, a beaker of wine, but our stocks were all but gone.
‘Some are now down to making bread from acorns, bracken, even pine bark,’ a silk-weaver woman murmured. ‘I’ve seen people so hungry they eat the bark off trees and what grass they can dig up from beneath the snow and ice.’
‘Many are dead from the dysentery,’ Noëmie said, ‘so they have to bury them in shared graves.’
‘Not that those spoilt royals are doing anything for our wretched situation,’ the blacksmith said. ‘What with the tithe we must pay the priest.’
‘It is not our overworked priest who profits from the tithe,’ I said. ‘Père Joffroy is as poor as his flock, living beside the Church and surviving on the pittance he earns from weddings, baptisms and funerals. No, it is the Church that benefits from the tithe, and everybody knows the Church pays no taxes and that its leaders come from the aristoc-’
‘Oh là là, don’t talk to me about the loathsome sang bleus,’ the baker said with a scowl. ‘Always worming their way out of taxes.’
‘It doesn’t help them much,’ Grégoire said. ‘The travellers tell us the bourgeoisie — the merchants, doctors and lawyers — are far better off these days than the aristocrats.’ He looked around the gathered villagers and I felt the same pride as when Papa had narrated his stories.
‘All I know is, at the end of the day we keep less than a fifth of our earnings,’ the silk-weaver woman said. ‘And we are told the silk looms of Lyon will soon be at a standstill.’ She waved an arm. ‘While our country’s finances are in a state, the Queen amuses herself going to horse-races, operas and balls, and, they say, buying three or four new dresses every week!’
‘She has birthed another son,’ the quarry man said.
‘Ha, the gossipers whisper that once again, the King is not the father,’ the weaver said. ‘But the Queen’s lover, the seductive Count Axel Von je ne sais quoi.’
She sniggered and I laughed along with the others.
In those instances of camaraderie, surrounded by friends and family, the warmth of those village bonds abated my distress; the creeping misery I could not truly shrug off.
19
Grégoire’s second child was born just days after my twenty-third birthday in March of 1785.
‘We’ll call her Mathilde,’ Grégoire said, his voice brimming with tenderness as he stroked his newborn’s soft pink face. ‘Mathilde Félicité Charpentier.’
‘What a fine, strong name,’ I said.
Mathilde’s rosebud lips pursed, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn she was smiling. ‘Come, Madeleine, Blandine, Gustave, say hello to your new cousin,’ I said.
‘Isn’t she the loveliest child God sent to this earth?’ my brother said.
Françoise smiled, latching the baby onto her breast.
I laughed. ‘Of course she is. They are all God’s loveliest children, and I hope you will let me teach her to read and write too, like Emile. Remember what Maman said — it is equally as important for a girl to know the literacy skills.’
‘You shall teach them the letters,’ Grégoire said. ‘And I’ll tell them the stories — every one of their grandfather’s legends.’
‘Oh yes, uncle Grégoire, tell us another story,’ Madeleine said. ‘Please, Maman let me stay here while you get water.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘but I won’t be long.’
I held a twin’s hand in each of mine as we continued on, to the river. The Vionne was running high and proud with the spring thaw. Scores of daises and poppies dotted the slope, the breeze randomly orchestrating their faces, and trees, pregnant with buds, bristled with birdsong.
The sun warming my face, I knelt beside the mill that turned the grain into wheat and rye flour and watched Blandine and Gustave play. I smiled at their squeals of glee as they
plucked daisies and tumbled about on the fresh grass.
Once I filled my copper cistern with water, I put it aside, cupped my hands and drank the clear water, the same emerald green of the jewels in the house of Saint-Germain; the colour of my eyes, so Léon had once claimed.
Such a long time since he’d called me Mademoiselle aux yeux de la rivière, it might only exist in my imagination.
I tilted my face to the sky, a blue so sharp it almost hurt my eyes. I inhaled the scent of willows, spiced primroses and the fruity odour of fresh grass. Nature’s perfumes filled the void a little, but no matter how deeply I breathed, my chest remained tight as a drum, as if the air couldn’t get in properly.
I began plucking the young dandelion greens with which I would make soup for our evening supper, our single daily meal since the disastrous winter. The hunger a permanent ache in my stomach — or perhaps it was this desperate sadness — I tried not to think of food as I watched the twins frolicking like new lambs.
‘Stay away from the edge,’ I warned.
Trapped in the updraught of the breeze, my voice trembled like a frightened heartbeat as I recalled the recent rumours of desperate land-workers casting their young into the river like unwanted kittens — mouths they could ill-afford to feed.
My basket full of dandelions, I sat for a moment, the young grass caressing my bare feet. My cheeks felt flushed from the day’s sun, Armand’s earthy smell tickled my nostrils and my skin prickled, as I imagined my husband come to sit by my side.
‘The fatigue beats me like some relentless whip, Armand,’ I said. ‘I fear I can’t go on. There are no eggs for the market, no vegetables. I don’t know what will become of the children and the farm.’
I’d not brought my cloak, but its weight pressed on me as if it were slung across my shoulders. Shadows crossed and darkened my mind, my eyes ached with the sunlight, the lids hanging so heavy I had to fight to stop them closing. I felt an urgent need to keep them open, or Armand might leave me again.
A twittering bird startled me. I must have closed my eyes, perhaps even dozed. Surely it could have only been for a moment. At first I wondered about the silence, then I realised the twins were no longer beside me.
