“And go . . . where?”
“Home. To your little sheep village.” He smiles, knowing how much I hate it when he refers to Mouton Blanc as such. “Far away from this place, and farther away from Paris. We’ve talked about it before, I know. But so much has changed.”
“Not so much. My heart is here, Bertrand. You are here. And—”
“But for how long?”
His eyes, blue as the sky on that last day I ever took the sheep to pasture, hold me, aloft as a cloud, suspended in their gaze. In them I see hurt and hope and an unhappiness so deep I cannot fathom the source.
“God alone knows the answer, Bertrand. He brought me here, to you. Do you not understand the miracle of circumstance?”
He pulls me forward and kisses me sweetly, then pulls away. “I do. And I see circumstances in my favor now. Before—I might have had the stigma of a traitor for leaving my duty.”
“And what has changed?”
He bucks at my challenge. “What has changed is the magnification. If, tomorrow, they found my post abandoned, my uniform laid neatly on my bed, nobody would follow. Nobody would hunt me down, throw me in prison as a deserter, because now there is another side. Another France.”
“Your duty is to your king.”
“My duty now is to my country. To help her survive. And trust me when I tell you the monarchy will not survive. I don’t mean their lives in the flesh; I mean the idea. The system. In the New World—”
“The New World is not our world.”
“Renée, chérie—” he grips my shoulder—“this is not your world. You and I—we are tools, don’t you see? I am a musket. You are a needle.”
I think about the feel of the brush against my palm as I arrange Madame Royale’s hair. Louis-Joseph’s quilted battlefield. Louis-Charles’s chubby hand tracing the pattern of my skirt. And Her Majesty, pointing her hand, devoid of jewels, charging me directly to protect her beloved image. “I’m more than a needle.”
“You’re not. Not to them. But to me, Renée . . . You are the only reason I’m here at all—to see you every day. But already, look how things have changed.”
“Yes, Bertrand. They have changed.” I cannot help feeling a little insulted, as he is speaking to me more as if to a child than the woman he has pledged to love. “You will see, though, that they will get better.”
He smirks, and for the first time, I feel true anger toward him. “And how do you know this, my little couturière?”
“I am not a silly, stupid girl, you know. La Déclaration. That will change everything.”
“La Déclaration. Do you think the men who paraded the head of the governor of the Bastille will care about a piece of paper signed by the king? Already he has no power. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“Every year,” I say, now speaking to him as to a child, “after the shearing, when the men would bring their wool to be measured and sold, always—no matter how fine the quality or how high the price—there was anger, resentment because the king’s portion was so outrageous. La Déclaration gives them the rights to their property. To whatever is grown and harvested on that property. Do you see? To our land, our crops, our—our women. Our people. Isn’t that what they want?”
“They? Has your loyalty so changed?”
“Has yours?”
I wonder if he can read the answer in my face as clearly as I can read his.
“La Déclaration has come too late,” he says. “It is nothing more than an empty gesture from a frightened sovereign. These people—they don’t want rights. They want blood. The king’s, yours, mine. Any who oppose.”
“But you don’t oppose, really.”
“I oppose their methods, but not their ideals. Oh, Renée—” He pulls me close again. It’s like falling into strength. “King Louis is bringing in more soldiers, recruits from all over the country to shore up his army here. I won’t be missed. Let’s leave now, this morning. I have a little money. I’ve rights to my horse. We could ride out today and be married in Mouton Blanc on Sunday.”
Because I am folded into him, I cannot see the grounds, the statues, the palace. I can see only our little town square, the market, the vast expanse of green pasture dotted with sheep, striped with dark earthen paths. The gurgle of the fountains holds none of the music of the stream. And to see them again—Gagnon, Laurette. To know whether they’ve changed as much as I have, or would they be as the day I left? Healthy and content. But the longing, real as it is, finds no purchase. I back out of his embrace.
“I cannot promise today.”
“Renée . . .” There is unmistakable warning in his voice. I’m breaking the promise I made to him months ago, that the next time he asked me to leave, giving me a day’s notice, I’d go. Willingly. Unquestioningly. I told him, “Don’t give me time to plan. Tell me ‘tomorrow’ and I’ll go.” And here he is, fulfilling my wishes, following my directives, and I am faithless in my response.
“The queen—hear me—she comes out of mourning next week. Give me time to help. To prepare her wardrobe as she sees fit. She trusts me, Bertrand, and she has so few people to trust.”
“You would choose her over me?”
“Only if you force me to.” My response is too quick, too sharp, and I wish immediately to take it back. I should have soothed, “Non, non, mon amour. I choose you, now and forever.” But my heart speaks too quickly sometimes, and in this moment, with sickening clarity, I see where my heart has found its home. I don’t deserve to be a part of his dream because I don’t share it. At least not today.
His sigh comes from deep within his cavernous chest. An exhalation composed of every intimate part of him. “Don’t you trust me, Renée?”
“With my life. With—” I dare not say my queen—“with the lives of those I love.”
“I will not fight for them. Do you understand?” It is the second time today I am asked if I understand, though the queen’s question seems more rhetorical in hindsight. “I will not take up arms against my brothers. Not in open battle, not in the streets.”
“What if you had been there? At the Bastille?”
“I like to think I would have walked away. But I know I would not take aim at a hungry man fighting to feed his family.”
“So you’re leaving?”
An eternity of heartbeats sound before he answers. “Not without you. At least not now. But soon. I will remain at the queen’s door as long as that door is at Versailles. But I will not follow. You may, if you choose. If you are allowed. But not me. God brought us here to meet. But I believe our journey ends here too. Fair enough?”
I nod and say, “Fair enough,” without voicing what I know to be true. That Her Majesty will never leave Versailles. She’ll not be taken out like those others, hidden in their coaches, afraid for their lives—or at least afraid to lose the luxuries that define those lives. She’ll not give in to the demands of those fueled by la Déclaration. I cannot imagine the circumstances that would pry her from her place.
L’épisode 24
Laurette
* * *
EN ROUTE
* * *
Laurette called him Joseph, named for the dead little prince she’d been told not to mourn. “It’s the mercy of the revolution,” Marcel had said as the bells tolled their somber proclamation. “One less tyrant in the world.” She called him Joseph, too, because he never gave her any other name. When asked, he said nothing, remaining tight-lipped with eyes downcast.
“What did Maman call you?” He shook his head. “What did Papa call you?” At this, he looked confused.
She tried a game, listing every name she could think of: “Georges? Pierre? Alphonse? Robert?” But no response. He claimed a gypsy at the palace gave him his clothes, and that a grand ghost lady wept when she saw him. He told a single, fantastical story about a room where he came to life a thousand times and walls painted with gold. “Maybe you are an angel after all,” she whispered into his curls one afternoon as he slept, head nestled in her
lap. “Sent to guide me home.”
That first day, they’d walked until the walls of Paris were just beginning to fade in both distance and light. A small grove of trees hid them from the road, and a trickle of a stream gave much-needed refreshment. Laurette dipped the cup and gave it first to Joseph, repeating until he could drink no more. Before quenching her thirst, she took a great mouthful of water, swished and gargled, then spat it into the earth, expelling the smoke and grit of the city.
“I’ve nothing to feed you,” she told him. “Nothing to cook, so we won’t have a fire. Come close to me if you get cold.” She didn’t need to tell him, though, as he folded himself beside her, head propped on her bosom, and fell asleep before her next breath.
When Laurette awoke, she could think of nothing but the need for food. By her estimation, this day dawned as her third without eating, and God alone knew how many for the boy. She dared not ask. The stream from which they drank their breakfast was too small to provide even hope for fish, and the road too well traveled to think wildlife nearby. Besides, she had nothing to snare or skin or cook with, and the fuzz of hunger allowed only enough strength to walk. By some silent agreement, neither she nor Joseph talked about food—not in memory or speculation or complaint. It was an unknown substance, a secret packed down until hunger was nothing more than a constant, consuming ache.
When she and Marcel had traveled this road the first time, in the opposite direction, they had done so with the illicit excitement of thieves. Upon approaching a fellow band of travelers, Marcel would boldly ask to join in their fireside supper, offering to read from one of his salacious pamphlets in exchange for a meal. “Enough to share,” he’d say with a protective arm around her. And, more often than not, the band would comply. They shared a brotherhood of discontentment and conspiracy, and Laurette would fall asleep listening to the rumbling talk of rebellion.
What they could not beg or borrow, they stole. An expert, Laurette crept through barns and coops, fishing warm eggs from beneath roosting hens or giving a cow a predawn milking. She stopped short of stealing livestock, justifying that everything she took would be replaced for the owner in time. Marcel’s fawning approval when she rejoined him with her spoils was nearly as rewarding as the food itself. “I’ve always said you were my lioness. They hunt, you know. Work much harder than the lion.” She basked in his glowing remarks, the chuckling assent of whoever joined their camp.
Leaving the city proved to be a different experience. Hourly, it seemed, a thundering coach drove up from behind them, horses at a pace suited for running to—or from—a battle.
On foot, weakened, with one child within and another at her hand, their journey would last three more days.
“Tell me again where we’re going,” Joseph asked.
“The house where I grew up,” she said, fighting the lump of emotion rising in her throat. “The man’s name is Gagnon, and there are two other boys—Philippe and Nicolas, older than you. And there are sheep, and goats, and two dogs named Cossette and Copine. And they can do wonderful tricks if you whistle just right. . . .”
She talked as the landscape became familiar. Up this path, and they would arrive at Girard’s farm. This other, to the pastureland and through the woods into Mouton Blanc. Over this crest and—
Gagnon.
He didn’t see her at first. Or, at least, he didn’t recognize her. It might have been only a matter of months since they’d seen one another, but she knew how much she’d changed. She felt the itch of her scalp from her lank, sweat-stiffened hair, the looseness of her teeth, the sharpness of her frame.
He, however, had not altered, save for the fact that his hair was in dire need of a trim, as it poked out straight from his head like straw, and he must not have taken a razor since she left, as the beard usually grown in winter darkened his cheek. In this, though, she took great comfort. Those were her responsibilities, after all, to catch him on a summer night saying, “It’s shearing time for you, mon vieux,” and she would work soap into a lather and hum softly while gliding the blade along the planes of his cheek, his neck.
He stopped, and she watched him see her. Recognize her. Know. He ran his hand through his beard, across the top of his head—both hands—then started walking again. Slowly, purposefully.
“Laurette.” He was so close now, she could clearly hear his voice, even though he choked on the word. “Laurette,” he said again, this time as if claiming a promise. “Laurette.” Pure joy as he stood before her, reaching and bringing her close. She stepped into his embrace, all—even Joseph—dropped and forgotten at her feet. He bent his knees, gazed upon her face, and kissed it. Her brow, her cheeks, her lips. He cupped his hand behind her head and drew her in.
So much—so much she had to tell him. To explain, to beg, but in that moment she took comfort in the vibration of his chest beneath her cheek as he spoke for them both.
“Merci à Dieu. Thanks be to God. You are home.”
The first night of her return, Laurette went to the stream and bathed, an hour or more, letting the water wash over her, not wanting to emerge until the filth of the city had been taken at least a mile away. She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling it become loose and compliant, scrubbed her scalp and skin with crude soap, but felt clean just the same. After, she sat on the bank exposed, knowing Gagnon would keep the boys away—himself, too, as he’d loudly announced his presence when he deposited a blanket and a clean dress, walking backward as he approached. She sat on the blanket and let the sun dry her skin, ran the brush through her hair in thin sections, until it was all soft waves. Pressing her hand to her stomach, she prayed to God for the babe’s safe deliverance from this weak, shriveled body.
She had a vague recollection of the blanket being tucked around her nakedness and being lifted in strong arms, carried, and deposited in a familiar bed. Not her own, but his—Gagnon’s—that she had shared throughout the winter. When she awoke, light was streaming through, and Joseph, scrubbed to something pink, was tucked up beside her.
For days she did nothing but sleep and eat, the room passing from light to dark to light again. Lulled by the conversation on the other side of the door—Gagnon’s low rumble, Joseph’s inquisitive tone, the older boys’ alternating teasing and authority—she cared not what thoughts were waking and which were dreams. All were safety and comfort. All were home.
Her strength returned with every cup of broth, poached egg, bit of bread soaked in warm goat’s milk, weak tea.
“You’ve learned to cook while I was away,” she said, propping herself up to eat a stew of clear, flavorful broth and soft vegetables.
“I could cook before you came to me the first time. Don’t you remember? You were a hungry little thing then, too.”
“Not so little anymore.”
“No,” he said, eyes averted. “Not anymore.”
The first day that Joseph was allowed to accompany the older boys to graze the sheep, Laurette rose, dressed, and stepped out into the midmorning, breathing deep the abundance of air.
“It’s not like this in Paris.” She held her arms out wide. “Always there is another person, just here, at your fingertips. And the streets are narrow, and they stink. Oh, Gagnon, you can’t imagine the smell.”
His response was little more than a grunt and a nod. “Can’t say that it will be much more pleasant here today. Mucking the pen.”
Laurette smiled. “Sheep dung is sweet perfume next to the stink of Paris.”
And for weeks, that was all she uttered about her time away. In obvious obedience, Philippe and Nicolas asked no questions, and all were consumed with answering Joseph’s endless inquiries. Laurette commended them on the garden, which yielded a generous amount of late-summer vegetables, and the small grain field looked to be equally promising, much more so than the previous year.
There was one part of her story, however, that could remain unspoken no longer. By early September the fluttering in her stomach, like a bird drying its feathers, was a re
gular occurrence, and she marveled that she could be standing at the table, ladling soup into bowls, and have it go unnoticed. Of course, she was the only woman in attendance, and even though the mound of flesh was still relatively modest beneath her voluminous skirt, it was only a matter of time before even young Joseph would take notice.
One evening when a brief, light shower left the kindling laid for the outside fire unusable, Laurette went inside and came back with a bundle of paper. “Here, use this,” she said as Gagnon continued valiantly to strike his flint.
“What is this?” She’d rolled the paper into a thin white twig.
“Pamphlets.”
Gagnon chuckled and renewed his efforts, soon building a modest flame. He and Laurette sat, arms close to touching, and called to the boys to finish their chores and come join them.
This had always been Laurette’s favorite time, the end of the day with the sky stretched violet above. Especially now, with the first cool crisp of autumn. The boys came quickly, Joseph claiming the space beside her.
“Shall I tell a story, then?” Gagnon asked, unnecessarily, as he told one nearly every evening. He whistled for Cossette and Copine to join them, each dog settling herself against one of the older boys, leaving only himself alone, detached.
Laurette gently laid a hand on his thigh, as if to capture his attention, saying, “Tell a fable.” When he did not flinch, she let her touch remain.
“Let me see . . . Once there was a dog.” Cossette and Copine’s ears perked, causing them all to laugh. “The dog had found for himself a tasty bone. One with all kinds of scraps of meat stuck to it. And he was taking it far into the forest, because he wanted some peace and quiet away from all the noise and work on the farm to enjoy it.” He shifted his weight—infinitesimally, but enough for Laurette to take her hand away.
“As he was crossing the bridge into the forest, he looked down—and what do you think he saw in the water?”
The Seamstress Page 27
