“How have you come to be here?”
I cannot imagine how to begin to explain. Knowing any answer I give will amount to a confession to a crime, I resort instead to an appeal to his affection. “Please, Marcel. Say nothing. Let us go.”
He brings his face close to mine, close enough to fool everybody, and says, “Stay.”
“What? How can we?”
“Not them. You. Stay here. Trust me, Renée. Haven’t I saved you before?”
“The last time you saved me sent me to prison.”
“You are alive. And I can’t promise you will be so for long if you go with them.” His warning is tangible. The death threatened by the court that sent me to Tuileries was a mere sting compared to the death threatened by a crowd of rebels on a stretch of dark road. I’d seen firsthand the determined violence of women. And this establishment teemed with men drunk on equality and wine.
“It’s not enough that you and your fraternité have destroyed our country. You would destroy the man?”
“He is a fool, Renée, to come here, to think that he has seeds of loyal subjects. He overestimates his appeal and mistakes passivity for support. You’ll be overtaken by dawn.”
“Not if you let us leave. Let me leave.”
“So you can be their prisoner?”
“They’ll let me go home once they are—safe.”
“They’ll never be safe, Renée. I’m not the only man in here. The king’s face is on the coins he used to pay for his supper. How stupid is he?”
Just then a voice breaks through, and I realize it’s meant for me. “Charlotte! Charlotte!” Marie-Thérèse, somehow broken free of her mother’s grip, calls to me with the sweet, naive smile that tells me she still thinks of this as some great game.
Marcel cocks a dark brow.
“Say nothing,” I plead. “Rescue me one last time.”
“Sweet Charlotte,” he says, and kisses my lips softly before whispering, “I was truly saddened to hear about your mountain.”
I believe him. Whatever Marcel lacks in character, he makes up for in hearty respect for a well-matched foe. He is the first—and only—person to offer condolence, other than the soldier who brought me news of Bertrand’s death with a bloodstained touch. I allow myself a moment to access the long-buried grief, and when I say, “Thank you, mon ami,” I am sincere in my gratitude.
When I reach Marie-Thérèse, she is giggling at the sight and teasing me about kissing a strange man.
I put on a matching playful tone to swallow my sadness. “We must keep it a secret, or your mother will think me a bad influence, and I won’t be able to tell you any more stories.”
The threat is enough. We lock arms for the short walk to where the carriage waits with a fresh team of horses impatient to lurch us into motion within seconds of latching the door. Their vigor is promising, and Louis informs us that we will drive through the night, possibly past dawn, to a new morning in a new country. A new life.
“All is going well,” Madame says. “All is going well, I think.” She is speaking to herself, repeating the phrase, though occasionally Louis confirms, “Yes, yes, my love.”
I can still feel Marcel’s lips, taste his wine, hear his words. “Stay. Stay. Stay.” What if he’d been there to say as much the morning I drove away with Madame Gisela? What if he’d said as much to Laurette?
Stay.
Stay.
Stay.
The word lulls me with the motion of the carriage—a steady pace meant to cover ground without overtaxing the team. There is no way to watch the passing landscape. No way to measure the passage of time. In this moment I learn that the king of France snores and that his sister mumbles. I feel the weight of a prince on my lap, a princess drawn beside me. I hear the queen breathing, intermittent sobs betraying her wakefulness. Our horses’ hooves, sixteen of them, work in perfect rhythm. Chains jangle predictably. These are the night sounds of a slumbering dynasty. And I am a part of it.
Stay.
Stay.
Stay.
The interruption is almost imperceptible at first. An extra beat. An odd hoof. Then another, and another, then an army. Behind us, beside us, and the carriage stops. Long before promised. Long before dawn.
PART VI
L’Automne (Autumn) 1793
et l’Éternité (Eternity)
* * *
Au nom de Dieu le Père, le Fils,
et le Saint-Esprit—je prie.
L’épisode 29
Laurette
* * *
MOUTON BLANC
* * *
Sometime during the summer, Father Pietro closed the door at l’église du Mouton Perdu, locked it, and set out on foot for his journey back to his tiny village tucked away on the other side of the Pyrénées Mountains. The revolution brought death not only to the monarchy, but to the clergy as well. La Déclaration, which robbed the nobility of power, also robbed the church of its fortune, leaving Father Pietro with nothing more than the generosity of the people of Mouton Blanc to put food on his table. And, while they were as generous as their own meager livings would allow, there was much whispering about the portions of bread given at the Sacrament getting smaller and smaller, and Christ’s blood watered to a pale pink.
But Father Pietro was a simple man, used to hunger and prone to sacrifice, and might have remained faithfully until his death had he not been forced to choose between his loyalty to the Pope and the demands of the constitutional church. Seeing nothing holy in a church that would force him to take an oath against His Holiness, he packed up his few belongings, including the silver from the altar which, he reasoned, he’d more than earned over decades of faithful service, and spoke a farewell Mass to the few congregants who bothered to attend.
Gagnon was among them, along with his three sons—the oldest half a head taller than himself, the youngest grown into a robust golden-haired boy of eleven, the middle a thick-waisted jovial lad with eyes full of humor. Laurette sat by his side, her face a mask of detachment. Secretly, she was pleased that her treks into town for Mass, no matter how infrequent, were coming to an end. She might miss her quiet Sunday mornings at home, alone, while Gagnon and the boys attended. Even more, those mornings with Aimée-Renée, snuggling in bed for an indulgent hour. But she would not miss the cold conversation—two sentences.
“Will you come with us, Laurette?”
“Non.”
He never asked why, and she never gave reason.
On this, Father Pietro’s last Sunday, however, the two-sentence conversation changed. Gagnon spoke them both.
“Get dressed. You’re coming with us.”
It was a cold morning, requiring shoes and socks for all. Laurette wore a new cape, fished from a trunk of clothing donated by a noblewoman attempting to atone for her wealth, and Aimée-Renée was wrapped in a thick woolen shawl. Gagnon surprised them all with a wagon and team of horses waiting at the front door, borrowed from Monsieur Girard.
“It’s a long walk for the little one,” he said. “And an even longer walk it’ll be carrying her home.”
The boys settled on the straw-lined bed, Aimée-Renée tucked up beside Nicolas. He was clearly her favorite of the brothers—sweet-tempered and strong, never preoccupied like Philippe or bossy like Joseph.
“You won’t have to give Confession,” Gagnon said. He leaned close and spoke low, outside of the boys’ range.
Laurette brought up the hood of her cape, bringing a curtain of fur between them.
“I know that’s why—that you don’t like the idea of going to church. You don’t want to speak your Confession to the priest. And I just want you to know, you won’t have to speak it to him. You never have to, if you don’t want.”
She had to turn her head to look at him. “You can speak for the priest now?”
He smiled. “I can protect my wife.”
Father Pietro’s homily was little more than an exhortation not to abandon the teachings of Christ in favor of a constituti
on. That they should call on the fortitude that sustained the first generation of Christians, worshiping under the heel of Rome. And he asked for prayers for his safe passage, as he would pray for all who remained to live under the new French tyranny. Then, one by one, the family of Émile Gagnon came forward for Holy Communion—the father, the three sons, and Laurette holding Aimée-Renée on her hip. She took the pinch of bread on her tongue, swallowed it whole, and drank the smallest sip from the chalice, all the while feeling like a thief.
The drive home revealed Gagnon’s true reason for borrowing Girard’s wagon for the journey. This time, rather than having all of the empty bed to stretch their legs, the boys contorted themselves around the pew taken from the church—with Father Pietro’s permission.
“We’ll have our own church next Sunday,” Gagnon said, “and every one thereafter.”
“But you’re not a priest,” Joseph piped up from the back, never one to be silent.
“That I’m not.” Gagnon’s response carried two meanings: one to answer Joseph, the other delivered with a playful grin in Laurette’s direction.
“Praise be for that,” she said, matching his entendre. Then, at a volume meant only for him, “Or else we wouldn’t be adding a seventh member to our little congregation.”
It was the first she’d told him of the new life within her, and his expression proved reward enough for the sickness and fatigue she’d been masking until she felt confident in her condition.
Gagnon transferred the reins to one hand and drew her to him, bringing his face within the hood of her cloak to kiss her. Deeply, completely, as if the garment afforded all the privacy of a closed bedroom door. “My love, what joy you bring me every day.”
Though Laurette had her doubts when they first loaded the pew into the wagon, Gagnon’s estimations proved true once they got home. It fit perfectly against the long wall. So much had changed in the years since she and Renée tiptoed in quiet steps outside of his closed, locked room. The stone walls wouldn’t easily permit an addition to the house itself, but he and the boys worked the entire summer adding a second story—a loft that spanned nearly the entire expanse of the first floor, with a narrow stairway leading up from the farthest corner behind the table. The storage trunks that once functioned as seating were moved upstairs, making room for the pew. Laurette found a bright-stitched cushion to lay upon it.
“Doesn’t seem very pious to have a pillow on a pew seat,” Gagnon said, his humor thinly masking disapproval.
“Then we’ll take it off on Sunday mornings,” Laurette said, admiring her handiwork.
Late that Sunday afternoon, after a good dinner of a savory rabbit pie, Gagnon set off to return the horses and rig to Girard.
“Don’t tell them our news,” Laurette said when she kissed him good-bye. “I want to keep it to ourselves for just a little while longer.”
He touched his hand to her stomach—not nearly as concaved and thin as it had been the last time she was newly pregnant, but round and soft and full. “That’s not a secret you’ll be able to keep for very long.”
The boys were dispatched to the evening chores while Laurette brushed and braided Aimée-Renée’s hair. The girl was every inch Marcel. Olive skin, thick black lashes, hair a mass of onyx ringlets that would tangle themselves to a mess if left loose on a pillow at night.
Marcel’s always did.
She shook the thought away.
What must it do to Gagnon, looking at the child every day, her features so obviously in conflict with his own? He loved her fiercely, dearly. He’d been the first person to touch her, to hold her. And when she hurt—when she fell and scraped an elbow, or came across a sweet dead mouse, or suffered once again an unkind word from Joseph—it was to Gagnon that she ran. He wiped her tears. He spoke blessings upon her. He hugged her tight and told her, again and again, that she was safe and good and loved.
Laurette had asked him one night, their first night entwined weeks after Aimée-Renée’s birth, when his feelings had changed. When he saw her as something more than a foundling to be protected. “As a woman?”
“It dawned slowly.” He’d stroked a finger the length of her naked spine, his words the same pace as the rising sun. “When I saw you with the boys, how you mothered them. Until then, I think God shielded my eyes from seeing you that way. He held my heart for so long after Denise died. I couldn’t imagine another woman. Loving another woman.” His voice trailed, his touch stopped. “And then—you know, I thought nothing much of it at the time, but it’s just coming clear to me now—an ordinary evening, you were cleaning up after supper—”
“Wasn’t much to clean up in those days . . .”
He chuckled, and she felt every vibration of it. “C’est vrai. But you were, and I had a passing thought that I wanted very much to take you to bed with me when you’d finished.”
“Was it that winter?”
“Non. Spring. Had it been the winter, God would have had to send an angel to sleep between us.”
She rolled over, his warmth a comfort against the reminder that she’d soon need to get out of bed to nurse the baby. “Instead of the dog?”
“Every night, I whistled to Cossette to guard you.”
A memory surged—four sweet notes that had ushered in her dreams.
“And so, the night I found you with Marcel in that room at the inn, I was so ashamed of myself. Thinking that, somehow, my thoughts had taken root in your head. That I’d made you feel—”
“It wasn’t you, my love.”
“I wanted to be a better man than he. I didn’t want you to think I desired you in the same vein, so when you came to me that night . . . You were luminous and beautiful. But I couldn’t take you the same way that he—”
“It’s not the same, Gagnon.”
He tugged her close. “Émile.”
“Émile.”
Now she tied the girl’s wool sleeping cap and kissed each sweet cheek. “Sleep well, ma petite.”
“Can I sleep with you and Papa tonight? It’s c-c-c-c-cold.” She said the last with exaggerated shivers. She slept in a small cot tucked in a corner of their bedroom and would have to move in summer when the new baby came.
“Non. But I can put another quilt on your bed. And . . .” She bopped the girl’s nose, guessing the unspoken request. “I can have the boys bring in a puppy to sleep with you. Would you like that?”
Aimée-Renée clapped her hands and burst into spinning. Cossette had slung a litter of pups fathered by an unknown drifter in late September. They would most likely be useless for herding, but one had been promised to keep as a pet.
Laurette walked with her into the bedroom and pulled a quilt from the trunk at the foot of her bed. Folding it double, she laid it on top of her wiggling daughter and smoothed her hands over the surface before tucking it at Aimée-Renée’s feet. She leaned over to give a final kiss when a small voice from within the covers said, “Will you pray with me tonight since Papa isn’t here?”
“Of course.” She knelt beside the bed and folded her hands. She knew the prayer Gagnon said over his daughter every night. She’d listened at the doorway, or from the fire, or from their own bed on nights when Aimée-Renée woke up from a bad dream and needed to hear it again. And she’d prayed it, too, on those rare occasions when Gagnon worked late, or was in town, or had fallen into slumber in his chair. She knew it because he’d taught the same prayer to little Laurette and Renée. She could almost feel Renée’s hand within hers.
“God of heaven, see me now
’Neath stars and moon and darkest clouds,
Grant me dreams to sleep in peace,
And with the sunrise in the East,
Wake me to a glorious day.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—I pray,
Amen.”
Laurette made the sign of the cross and smiled at the movement beneath the pile of blankets as Aimée-Renée did the same.
Back out in the front room, she stoked the fire and sat to wa
tch the flames dance. The boys came in, arms loaded with pups, claiming it was too cold for them to sleep in the barn, but Laurette resisted their pleas. “Only your sister’s. The rest have their mother, and she will keep them warm enough.”
When they returned—subdued, but not sullen—they sat with her. Philippe in Gagnon’s chair, Nicolas and Joseph ignoring the new pew and choosing instead to sit on the thick braided rug at her feet, playing le jeu d’échecs. It was full dark, but still early, and she granted permission for them to stay up until Gagnon came home. Laurette picked up her needlework—she’d become quite good over the years, and was expertly knitting a bright-red sweater for Aimée-Renée. Philippe read from Gagnon’s Bible, intermittently out loud, as he liked to ponder a passage endlessly before moving on to the next.
I have too much, Laurette thought as she worked her needles. I am too safe, too warm, too full.
At her feet, Joseph howled when Nicolas took his queen.
“And now— ” Nicolas held the wooden piece up to cast a giant shadow on the opposite wall and made a chopping gesture—“off with her head!”
“Enough of that,” Philippe said. “It’s nothing to joke about.”
Laurette held back a smile—not at the boy’s joke, but at a foundling who sounded so much like the man who found him.
“Did they really chop off the queen’s head, Maman?” Of all the boys, only Joseph called her such.
“They did. Now, as your brother said, let’s not speak of it.”
He studied the board. “It’s sad, because she was very kind.”
Nicolas snorted. “She was not. And how would you know, anyway?”
“I met her once, before Maman and I left Paris.” His voice was distracted, dreamy, as if recalling a long-forgotten memory. Perhaps a memory he never knew he had. Both of his older brothers were laughing now, and he turned to Laurette, his face pink with indignation. “Tell them, Maman. You know. About the lady and the gypsy. I told you.”
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