The Space Between Words

by Michele Phoenix

  “So . . .” I could feel my hope of tracing Adeline’s lineage decreasing. “There would be no paper trail to validate that they existed?”

  “I’m afraid not. The law essentially erased their lives from the region’s records. But . . .” He went around his desk and pulled a torn and dog-eared map from one of its drawers, then waved it in the air as he continued his thought. “It isn’t much, but you can at least see the place where the village used to stand. Here—let me show you.” He unfolded the map on top of the stacks on his desk and took a moment to orient himself. Then pointed at a spot not far from the town of Vallon-Pont-d’Arc. “Right here—just off the D290. That’s where it was. Look for the Carrefour grocery store on the left as you come into town and mark a moment of silence for the history under its floors.”

  “So they built a mall over Gatigny,” Grant said as we drove back to Balazuc. We were in Mona’s Peugeot 308, a significant upgrade from the 2CV.

  “Life goes on, right?” I was surprised at the cynicism I heard in my voice.

  Grant glanced at me but didn’t say anything for a moment. When he did speak, it was with surprising perceptivity. “Life goes on and people forget.”

  It was a grim assessment, but I knew it was accurate. The Paris attacks had happened less than a month before, and many in the country had already turned their attention back to trivial concerns.

  I sat back and watched the countryside flash by, immune to the sights that would have charmed other tourists. Though talking about Patrick with Grant and Mona had allowed some light into the sepulchral darkness that had haunted my spirits since Paris, it had also heightened my sense of his absence. The intensity of missing him was a physical ache. I just wanted to have my friend back. To have him real and breathing next to me.

  I allowed my mind to conjure up his voice, the way he always sat, how he leaned forward when he spoke with friends—even with strangers. I tried to recall every detail of who he was, unsettled by the notion that time moves on and life builds malls on the graves of those who are no longer here. I crossed my arms to ward off a sudden chill, and my hand settled over the incision in my waist. I realized how grateful I was for a reminder that wouldn’t fade.

  It was a strange imbalance—the newfound ability to function almost normally, even lightheartedly, for minutes and hours at a time, and the underlying strain of all I had endured, quick to blindside me when I expected it the least. The unpredictability was confusing and destabilizing. So was the subtle tension that sometimes wedged itself between Grant and me. I hadn’t identified it yet, but I heard its hum in the lulls of our conversations.

  THIRTEEN

  I was teaching my three pupils in the shadowy space above Serge’s forge when Brother Ludovic arrived. I shushed the children when we heard the clatter of his horse’s hooves, and we edged toward a spot where I could see him and Serge down below.

  “Something wrong with the shoes?” Serge asked.

  Ludovic had come just the day before to have his horse reshoed.

  “They’re heading toward the Baillards’ farm,” he said without preamble, his voice low and urgent.

  Serge said, “The dragoons?”

  “Five of them.”

  Both men looked up as I clambered over the edge of the loft and descended the ladder.

  “How long ago did they leave?” I asked Ludovic, dread chilling me.

  “Just now. I came as soon as they were out of sight.”

  I reached for his horse’s reins. “Can I borrow him?”

  The men exchanged glances and Serge said, “It may not be safe.”

  “Please.”

  Ludovic hesitated. “I’d go myself . . .”

  “You have children,” I said. “And the dragoons won’t be surprised to see me at my family’s farm.”

  Serge moved around the horse to help me into its saddle. “Go with God,” he said.

  I rode through the broad doors of the forge, unconcerned by who might see me, and set off toward home by the less traveled path that ran along the stream, arriving at the farm ahead of the dragoons.

  I had just begun telling my father what I knew when they crested the hill and came into view. Father motioned for me to step back, and he stood in the barn’s doorway, waiting as they approached.

  “Pierre Baillard?” their leader called as they rode into our courtyard.

  Father nodded, but said nothing.

  “Where is your son?”

  “He isn’t here.”

  The white of Mother’s apron drew my attention to the house. She stood on the doorstep mouthing words I imagined were a prayer.

  The soldiers dismounted, and the leader approached my father as the others hung back, surveying the farm, the land, my mother, and me. “Where is your son?” he said again, more ominously this time.

  “I answered your question. He isn’t here.”

  The dragoon’s next step brought him so close to my father that they stood chest to chest, Father’s lean lines a contrast to the other’s bulky form. “You know it is a crime against the Crown to flee the country.”

  My father didn’t flinch. “I know.”

  “Where is your son?” The dragoon’s voice was getting sharper. Shriller.

  “He isn’t here.”

  “Where has he gone?”

  “He isn’t here.”

  I knew my father wouldn’t lie. No matter how much the soldier yelled and threatened, Father would not lie.

  “And your daughter?” the dragoon asked, instantly drawing his men’s attention. He glanced at me. “The younger one, thirteen or so, I think?”

  “She’s not here either.”

  “Search the house and the barn,” the dragoon ordered quietly.

  Two men set off toward our home, and two more walked into the barn. My father turned to follow them, but the soldier drew his sword and barred his way. I saw my mother flinch as the men shoved past her into the house.

  I could feel the head dragoon’s bloodshot eyes following me as I crossed the yard to her side. “Mother . . .”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” she said, her voice shaking, her face pale.

  A horse whinnied in the barn. I saw my father start when it cried out in pain. One of the men inside let out a long, shrill cheer. Then our second horse whinnied, the sound cut short with a bloodcurdling cry. They came out of the barn, and one of them casually drove a sword through the neck of Ludovic’s stallion too. Mother reached out for me when my legs grew unsteady, but her eyes didn’t leave my father.

  Inside the house, furniture crashed and pottery shattered. The men called out and egged each other on. I heard their footsteps on the ladder to the loft, to the safe space that had witnessed the best of my childhood.

  The dragoon’s leader prodded Father away from the barn with his sword, into the center of our courtyard, then turned on him again. “Where is your son?”

  Father stood facing the man whose soldiers had slaughtered his horses and still threatened his family, ashen-faced and unyielding.

  “He isn’t here.”

  The dragoons’ leader stood back to get a better look at my father. “You’ll do well in the galleys. All that farmer’s muscle . . .” He turned his salacious gaze on Mother and me. “And they’d do well . . .” He leered. “They’d do well in my captain’s bed.”

  I felt my blood run cold. Mother reached for my arm and pulled me nearer. Then she stepped in front of me, shielding me with her body, a desperate, futile gesture.

  The men who had been ransacking the house stepped out and grabbed us from behind, their breath sour against our necks, their hands groping.

  I felt my father’s eyes more than I saw them. His agony reached me across the space between us. “My son and my daughter have gone to Bourges,” he said, perhaps trying to deflect the attention from us. Though his expression was impassable, there was fear in his voice. It was a sound I’d never heard before. “There’s—there’s a weaver there who buys our silk.”

&nbs
p; The dragoon struck him in the temple with the grip of his sword.

  Father hadn’t lied. They’d gone toward Bourges, and there was indeed a weaver there with whom we’d done business. But on this trip they’d gone to stay with a pastor who would provide food and lodging until they moved on toward England.

  “You lie,” the soldier sneered.

  “I wouldn’t lie,” my father said, raising his voice to a persuasive pitch.

  “For this lie, you should die.” He pressed the tip of his sword into Father’s upper arm and drew blood.

  “I did not lie,” my father repeated through clenched teeth.

  The solder struck him again with his sword’s grip, swift and hard to his left cheek.

  “No.” Mother tightened her hold on my arm as I tried to step forward. The drunken soldiers still standing behind us released us and stumbled toward my father, bloodlust on their faces. We watched as Father straightened. He touched his cheek, and his hand came away bloodied.

  There was nothing we could do as they encircled him, propelling him back and forth between them like a rag doll. “Liar,” they bellowed.

  “What’s your God doing for you now?”

  “To the galleys with you, you Protestant filth!”

  When Father lost his balance and fell, they began kicking him. He curled into a ball and tried to shield himself, but his strength and reflexes were too wounded for self-protection. My mother’s knees buckled, but her eyes never strayed from her husband. I smothered my cries behind shaking hands and knelt beside her, certain that my father would soon be dead.

  But they didn’t kill him that night. They left him lying on his side, bloodied and motionless, his legs drawn up and his arms around his abdomen. The leader planted a boot on his bruised and swelling face and leaned low to growl, “How about we make a deal, you peasant heretic? If they’re not back here by tomorrow, we’ll cut off your hand. The day after that, we’ll cut off the other. And if they’re still not back from Bourges on the third day, we’ll return to this farm, send you off to the galleys, and move into your house to make your women ours.”

  He leered in our direction, then pressed harder on my father’s face. “You hear what I’m saying, you Huguenot scum? Get your son and daughter back here or . . .” He ran his sword lightly across my father’s neck, and I saw blood seeping from the cut as the dragoon looked up at us and winked. Then he ordered his men to set fire to the barn, and they rode away from our farm.

  We moved into town that night under cover of darkness. Though our home had been spared as the barn burned to the ground, we knew that our farm was no longer a safe place. One of our friends risked his own life by riding out to warn us that the king’s men had stationed lookouts on the roads that led into the hills, barring our escape. With those routes blocked, we’d have to shelter in Gatigny for a while and put greater distance between us and our oppressors when they let down their guard.

  Mother and I packed what we could carry while my father lay on their bed suffering agony, then she went back into the house and returned with my sewing box in her arms. “I’ve put all our pages inside,” she said. “In case they catch us before we reach the forge.”

  Serge wasn’t surprised to see us standing at the back window to his shop, as the whole town had heard of the fire at our farm. He took one look at my father’s battered face and crawled out the window himself to help us get him inside, his features hardening as my father groaned and grimaced with the pain of being moved.

  “You weren’t seen?” Serge asked.

  Father shook his head. “We circled around to the west and took the alleys to the forge. I’m certain no one saw us.”

  “It was Jacques,” Serge said.

  My mother gasped. “Josephine’s son? We’ve known him since . . . He was one of Adeline’s children!”

  “Collaborating with power is a heady thing,” Serge said, leading us to the ladder at the far end of his shop. He motioned to the space above us. “If you clear away the materials Adeline uses for her classes, there will be space enough for all of you.”

  “We’ll leave as quickly as we can,” Father said. “As soon as the dragoons think we’re long gone.”

  “The caves?” Serge asked. How often had he and my father discussed such a plan, never thinking that our family would be the one in need of refuge?

  “For now,” Father answered this man who was putting his own life at risk to defend ours. “We know the risk you’re taking, Serge. First allowing Adeline’s students to study here and now this . . .”

  A faint smile creased Serge’s forge-weathered face. “We are a brotherhood. Brothers help brothers.”

  We settled into the low, narrow space at the back of the loft, clearing it of books and writing materials so we could all three lie down to sleep. Mother and I helped Father to the wooden floor. He grunted with the pain of broken ribs and bruised flesh, his face so discolored and swollen that I could scarce tell who he was.

  We had a chamber pot, a couple blankets, and little else. No candle. No lantern to draw attention to our location. It was hot and reeked of coal fires and heated metal. But it was a safe place for now.

  After we’d lain side by side, awake and speechless for some time, my mother whispered, “We should have died today.” Her hand fumbled for mine and found it. I knew she held my father’s too. “I thank God for his protection.”

  I thanked God, too, but I knew the soldiers’ visit had set our lives onto a path that we could no longer control. What danger had already existed had been multiplied tenfold, and I envisioned with foreboding what might lie ahead.

  We spent seven days at the forge.

  “You can’t leave yet,” Serge said on the third day, concern somehow audible in his usual monotone. “They’re still watching all escape routes and promising rewards to anyone who turns you in.”

  That we’d eluded their game of cat and mouse before they’d had a chance to quench their thirst for Huguenot blood was an affront to their honor. To save face and reestablish power, they’d enlisted the dragoons stationed in neighboring villages to scour the countryside for signs of our passage.

  “Yet every hour we spend under your roof puts you in greater jeopardy,” Father said to Serge. He reclined against a pile of linens in the far end of the attic, the bruising in his face now faded and yellowish. The past days had been agonizing for him, the discomfort from his broken bones a constant misery. When I’d handed our chamber pot down to Serge on our first night in his attic, I’d seen blood there and wondered how long my father could survive the injuries we couldn’t see.

  Serge’s report was the same on the fourth night. The dragoons were still out en masse, making a flight to the caves too risky to consider. The fifth and sixth days marked a slight lessening in the number of them patrolling the environs, but their sights were still too keenly set on finding “those Baillard heretics.” We could hear them going door to door through town, when the forge didn’t resonate with the hammering and hissing down below, cajoling and commanding our friends and neighbors to report any sightings.

  By the seventh day, Father was able to move a bit more freely. It took him some effort and pain to get up from the ground, but after nearly a week of being pulled up and lowered by Mother and me, it was significant progress.

  “We need to get to the caves,” he said when Serge came to update us that night.

  “It still may not be safe.”

  “Serge . . .” The conviction and courage had returned to Father’s voice. It was a relieving and disquieting sound. “It’s time for us to go.”

  “You’ll have to walk.”

  Father nodded. “By God’s strength.”

  There was a moment of silence as Serge seemed to consider how much influence he could wield over a man as determined as my father. “I’ll let you out through the back window when I’m certain it’s safe,” he finally said. “Be ready to go the moment I give you the signal.”

  “Thank you, my friend.”


  Serge looked at Mother and me. “With these two helping you, I believe you’ll make it to the caves.”

  “I’m not going,” I said. The sureness in my voice surprised me.

  My mother turned anxious eyes on me. “Adeline . . .”

  “I can’t leave the children, Mother. They count on me.”

  “To write and read, yes. But, Adeline, is it worth your life to teach them these skills?”

  “I’m teaching them the Bible,” I said, conviction strengthening my resolve. “It isn’t just school. You’ve told me so yourself.”

  “They can learn from someone else.”

  I squared my shoulders and tried to sound more courageous than I felt. “This is the task entrusted to me,” I told her. “An appointment from God to endow them with the words and skills they’ll need to tell the story he is writing. To keep our faith from dying, I’m willing to take the risk.”

  “I’ll stay,” Mother said, desperate. “I’ll teach them. You can go.” She turned to my father for reinforcement, but there was only pride in his eyes as he looked at me.

  “I believe I’m the one God has chosen for this work,” I whispered to them both. “This burden, this privilege, it comes from him.”

  “Are you sure?” my father asked. I could see that he already knew the answer.

  “I’m sure, Father. You go with Mother and care for those who need you in the caves. I’ll remain here and care for those who count on me in Gatigny.”

  My mother flinched and looked down. She knew arguments were futile.

  “You’ll allow her to stay on?” my father asked Serge. “To live and teach in this room?”

  Our friend didn’t hesitate for a moment. “She is bestowing eternity on our children.”

  “I am grateful, my brother,” Father said, extending his hand to his friend.