The Seamstress

by Allison Pittman

  She waded in cautiously. “You’ve never told me that the lady was the queen.”

  “But she was. I know she was. She must have been. And the gypsy, she looked like—”

  Nicolas guffawed. “Don’t tell me. She had a patch over one eye, and rings on every finger, and bells on her ankles . . .” He rose with each detail and leapt into a dancing shadow on the wall.

  “Nicolas . . . ,” Laurette warned, sensing Joseph’s increasing frustration. “And, Joseph, you mustn’t exaggerate. Papa says it’s the same as lying.”

  “I’m not exaggerating. He is. I’m trying to tell you that the gypsy . . . she looked a little like Aimée-Renée. Only taller, but not as tall as you. And her hair not dark, like that. Her face, though, a little, reminds me of—”

  He could not continue over the unrestrained laughter of his brothers, and he soon fell silent, clutching a rook in his hand, staring at it while fighting back tears.

  “That’s enough.” Rarely did Laurette speak with a volume of authority, but tonight her heart welled with something fearful. “Philippe, Nicolas. Upstairs, both of you. And step quick or I’ll have you out curled up with the pups in the barn.”

  Unfazed by her outburst, Nicolas pried the rook out of Joseph’s hand and put the game pieces in the drawstring bag while Philippe returned the Bible to its place on the mantel. Each stopped to plant a kiss on her cheek and say, “Good night, Laurette,” before heading upstairs, recounting Joseph’s story in amused whispers.

  “Viens, mon cher,” Laurette said, laying her knitting to the side and making room for Joseph on her lap. He was far too big for this, of course, but this evening both needed the comfort. His head barely fit in the cradle of her shoulder, and his hair smelled more of barn than of boy. Still, she breathed him deep. “Tell me about the lady and the gypsy.”

  “She was the queen.”

  “Very well. Tell me about the queen and the gypsy.”

  He did, reciting the familiar story in detail, though he hadn’t spoken a word of it in nearly three years. This time, though, was different. There were new details of the room, the art, the carpets, the drapes. The lady—the queen—had a big face and sad eyes, like she’d been crying. And the gypsy. Still, she wore a colorful skirt and a wide belt with all kinds of pockets and interesting things. “She taught me to play cat’s cradle.”

  “I remember. And what did she look like?”

  This was when he remembered how small she was. Almost the same size as him. And her face looked like cream. And her hair was mostly dark, but maybe had a little bit of blonde in it. And she was jumpy.

  “Jumpy?”

  “Oui.” The word came out as a yawn. “She moved so fast. Like she couldn’t sit still. You would have called her a little fish on a line, Maman.”

  Laurette held her boy, feeling him grown heavy with sleep. Her arms grew numb around him, her legs ached with the weight, but she somehow knew this would be the last time she would feel this. Soon there would be a new baby—a boy, she hoped with all her heart, longing to share a son with Gagnon from his first breath.

  She awoke feeling him lifted. Even her husband’s strong arms and legs protested at the weight.

  “Shall I put him to bed with us? I don’t know that I want to carry him upstairs.”

  “Non.” She stretched the pins and needles out of her arms. “I want you to myself tonight. Put him in the downstairs room.”

  Her promise seemed to renew his vigor, and he hitched the boy for a better grip before heading to the empty room—soon to be Aimée-Renée’s—to tuck the boy into the waiting bed.

  Laurette stood and made her way through the darkness, every inch of the house as familiar and evident as if illuminated by the brightest light. Undressed to her shift, she crawled under the covers, and later listened as Gagnon did the same. He crawled in beside her, his hand cupped protectively over the life newly revealed to him that day.

  “I hope it’s a boy,” she whispered into the night.

  “We have so many boys,” he whispered to her cheek, the softness of his winter beard tickling. He began to move upon her, but she braced her hand against him.

  “I’ve something to tell you.”

  “Now?”

  “It’s about Renée. I think our Joseph may have found her.”

  L’épisode 30

  Renée

  * * *

  PARIS

  * * *

  There is a certain part of the day—two hours, I’d guess, based on the count I keep in my head—when the sun fills my window with light, and I can see every stitch perfectly. My hands are a blur as I move the shuttle with detailed speed, but the pattern it creates is precise. Every tiny diamond of space. Every petal and pearl. During that time of light, I can produce a trim the length of my leg, or a square the span of my back. I race against the time, ignoring the pinch between my shoulder blades, assuring my neck it will straighten itself soon, when the first bit of shadow crosses over my hands. That is when I will rest and eat.

  It is the guards who keep me well supplied with yarn for all my knotting work. I make little things for their wives or lovers (or both, as one man incomprehensibly claimed). The queen’s gift had been deep within a pocket, sewn just for such a treasure, at the time I was handed down from the king’s carriage at Varennes. When it is not cradled in my palm, I keep it coated with soot to hide its value.

  The first time, a young guard, surely not much older than I, handed me a sad little ball of red string and asked if I could somehow fashion it into a ribbon. I did, a simple pattern of rosettes which he took with reverence—as if it were equal in value to the tool used to create it.

  More and more. The same request. Red ribbons. They brought me treats in exchange. Bits of chocolate, a bottle of wine with nearly a quarter left to drink. A pillow. A hairbrush. Then one day I happened to catch a glimpse of my latest happy patron—Albert, my least favorite of my guards—before the door closed behind him. He had a thick waist and thin neck around which he’d tied the ribbon. Affecting a woman’s posture, he declared in a sickening falsetto all the ways “she” would show gratitude for his gift. His compatriots laughed, and a twisting came to my stomach. The work of my hands was being used to glorify the horrifying work of the new regime. All of my stitches, my perfect, pretty stitches, wrapped to emulate the torn flesh and blood of la Guillotine. The same that killed my king, my queen, and others I could count only by keeping track of the cheering in the street.

  From that moment I would create no more red ribbons, but my hands cannot rest idle. For the promise of socks I was brought knitting needles and wool. For the promise of white lace on an infant’s burial gown, I received an enormous skein of high-quality white thread. I work according to the light. Knitting in the morning, the grayness adequate to envision simple stitches. Knotting in the afternoon, my hands following the arc of the sun. Mending in the evenings—repairing the clothing of those too poor to replace a torn garment. Whenever I feel resentful of this chore, I think of the little boy, naked in his poverty. I patch a knee or repair a seat and think, Surely this is God’s child too.

  When I learned of the king’s death, and that Madame would be permitted to wear black to mourn him, I asked for a skein of fine black wool, from which I knitted one pair of black stockings for the woman in my jailer’s life, and yards upon yards of beautiful lace for Madame to trim her dress, should she desire. To have it delivered safely to her hands, I promised a tricolor bonnet I’d crafted in secret and tucked away for just such a bribe.

  I do not know if Madame ever received my gift, for who can trust the honesty of a rebel? I’ve heard she wore her mourning gown until the day she herself was taken to la guillotine, but that she was not permitted to wear it to her own death. For that, she wore a simple white shift—the same that had accrued such criticism in her past—and a white cap edged with lace. I knew that cap. Even without seeing it, or having any way to confirm my suspicions, I knew. That was my lace stitched to it. The thin, pa
le ribbon threaded through. The one she said always made her think of her babes in heaven.

  It is more than two years gone since our carriage was overtaken on that dark road. Three weeks since a cheering crowd marked the end of Madame’s life. For all my days here, I have awoken with some hope of freedom. At first, I thought—surely—no one would have the courage to brazenly take the life of a king. Then my naiveté transferred to my queen, thinking such barbaric measures would not be taken with a woman, no matter how reviled. But they took her head, held up the face they’d mocked.

  And now I wait.

  I am roused from sleep by a voice at my window.

  “Renée?”

  Not the window to the world outside. That is high and barred and serves as nothing more than a source of light and a means to measure the passing of one day to the next. No, this is at the narrow window cut into my door, and for all my months behind it, this is the first I’ve heard my name spoken aloud.

  “Renée. C’est moi.”

  He need not say his name. There is only one man in all of France who knows of my existence here. Marcel.

  I’m far too short to see out the window, but I run to the door and place my cheek upon it. “Marcel? What are you doing here?”

  “Why do you think he’s here?” Albert’s equally familiar voice makes his insinuation clear. “And I reckon I can take myself out of earshot for a spell, though I hate to miss out.”

  The key turns and the door opens. Marcel enters with a playful push to his back; then it closes again behind him. His appearance is no longer that of the lusty rebel who sang from the tabletop at the Sainte-Menehould inn, our place of betrayal. He wears a fine suit of clothing, his hair trimmed and smoothed away from his face—handsome as ever—and tied at the nape with a ribbon of black silk.

  “You look . . .” He searches for words. “Better than I expected.”

  “And you seem to have prospered. Was the price on our heads really so high?”

  “I didn’t betray you, Renée. You saved me once; I saved you once. And since then our actions have been to serve only ourselves, non?”

  “And yet I’m in prison, and you are looking like the man who discovered a rich dead uncle. Is that what happened, Marcel? Did you finally stumble across a family that would claim you?”

  A tiny flicker of hurt crosses his face, but he catches it with a half-tipped smile. “The constitution is my family. It’s done more for me than any uncle, or father, or god could ever do. I can help you now, Renée.”

  He has a cloak draped over one arm and lifts it to reveal a small basket of fruit. “Pears, your favorite. And hard to come by here.” He moves the table and chair, taking the seat and gesturing that I sit across from him on my cot.

  “You can help me now?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you couldn’t earlier.”

  He takes a knife from his breast pocket—the guard must not be aware he has such a thing—and begins to slice the fruit.

  My mouth waters and my pride falters as I greedily snatch the first sliver.

  “Had you listened to me that night at the inn, you could be—anywhere. An apartment in the city, rewarded for delivering the wayward monarchs into the hands of the people. Or a little château, with a houseful of servants to do your bidding. But you didn’t listen, and here you are.”

  “Is that why you betrayed us? Because I wouldn’t obey you?”

  The pear is now fanned out on the table, and he takes a piece for himself. “Do you think I am the only one who recognized you? I don’t know who alerted the watch, but it wasn’t me. I don’t particularly care—rather, didn’t care—about Louis and Marie. I knew he was a powerless figurehead with weak support. You, on the other hand . . .”

  “How can you help me?”

  “Do you want to know more about Laurette?”

  Her name—just to hear it spoken brings her full to life within me. “You said she went home. Why was she ever here?”

  “She came with me, for a time. And then she left. I came home—to what we had as a home, and she was gone.”

  “Is she—” I cannot bring myself to ask.

  “Mouton Blanc. Safe and sound.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  He chuckles at the idea. “Moi? Non.”

  “Then how can you be sure?”

  “Because I’m in a position to ask people to be sure. There’s more. She’s actually married to the old man.”

  “Stop,” I say almost playfully and reach for another pear now that my stomach has unclenched. I don’t consider for a moment that his heart is affected in any way by her marriage to another man. “There’s no more than ten years between them. And Laurette has always been an old soul.”

  “They have children. Three boys that they’ve taken in—one that came back with Laurette from Paris.”

  “Yours?” At one time, such a question would have been too far beyond my sense of delicacy to ask, but these times are new.

  “Non. An older boy. They have a child together, too. A little girl.”

  “She’s lived an entire life without me.”

  “As have you without her. The difference is, she will live to be an old woman. Whereas you . . .” He shrugged, as if the possible ending of my life were nothing but a trifle.

  “So there’s no hope for me?”

  “You’ve been charged with treason, Renée. Conspiring against the new regime. You won’t live to see the New Year.”

  “Unless? You said you could help me.”

  “Unless . . . Early this morning, hours before the sunrise, I was walking along the river. I could not sleep, you see. Always—often—my mind is so full. I passed by a man similarly plagued. He was walking very swiftly, more so than the hour and circumstances demanded, and muttering to himself, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. . . . I am the resurrection and the life.’”

  “As Christ is,” I say, completing the verse: “‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’”

  “All that is well and good.” Marcel pops a slice of pear in his mouth and chews it while extracting a sheet of paper from his portfolio. “But I am here to be your resurrection, ma petite. And to keep you from being dead at all. At least, not anytime soon. I can come for you tomorrow with officers of the court and set a date for a new trial at which you will throw yourself on their mercy.”

  I laugh out loud, the sound almost foreign to my ears. “I’ve yet to see any mercy to fall upon.”

  “Mercy sent you to Tuileries after your first trial. Don’t forget that.” He slides the paper around so I can see the words. “It reads, in summary, that you were unduly coerced in your participation with the events leading to Louis’s attempt to flee, and that you were forced to accompany them to stand in the place of their daughter, Marie-Thérèse, should they be apprehended on the road.”

  “But that’s not true,” I say, my eyes tracking the writing as he reads.

  “Did Marie Antoinette ask you to help in any way?”

  “I made her dress.”

  “At her request?”

  “Yes, but—I could have refused.”

  “Could you? And could you have been trusted to stay behind, knowing all the details of their plans?”

  “But I knew nothing, Marcel!”

  “The perception of the court is far more important than the facts in the matter.”

  He looks and sounds like an avocat, but I know he has no more education than I, beyond what he’s read in the newspapers and pamphlets and political journals always at his elbow at Gagnon’s table. Is that another product of the revolution? That a man can step into the profession of his choosing? Yesterday a madman rushing through the home of the king, today a legal expert extracting an innocent prisoner by inventing yet another crime?

  “I won’t say this. Any of it.”

  “Nobody wants your blood on their hands.”

  “Then tell them to let me go.”

  “I don’t have any real
power. Nobody’s going to do my bidding. I’ve simply worked my way into the consciousness of the court. They know me, and for some unfathomable reason, they respect my opinions. They’ll listen to this argument knowing it is my argument. You don’t have to say any of this. I will. Every word. They’ll simply ask if it is your testimony, and you say yes. Then you sign your name to it, I hire a carriage, and you’ll have supper with Gagnon and his new family the next day. If, indeed, that’s what you want.”

  It is the first glimmer of hope I’ve felt since I knew I had a need to feel it. “Surely it can’t be that easy.”

  “Justice is a fickle thing these days.”

  I cast down my eyes and continue where Marcel left off reading. My ears rush with blood at the words that follow. “I renounce any loyalty to the former monarchy of France. I declare Louis XVI to be a ruler corrupt in policy and person, his wife, Marie Antoinette of Austria, to be a traitorous woman of low moral character. I will support no actions that aim to establish his children into places of power. Furthermore, I pledge my loyalty to the causes of Nationalism and the citizens of France. I give my heart and my soul to my country, granting no other entity primacy in my consciousness.” My voice chokes on the words, and I look at Marcel through tears. “I do not believe this. Any of it.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you believe, Renée. On either side. Today’s beliefs won’t last forever. They might not last until tomorrow.”

  Try as I might, I cannot see Louis as anything other than a befuddled man, more suited to life as a country squire than king of a nation. If not for the laws that bound him to the throne, I think he would have spent all his days hunting. And Madame? Had these people never seen her with her children? I recall the sadness in her eyes as she recounted the stories told about her. Worse, I remember Laurette telling me those same stories, giggling over them in the loft, back when I barely understood the crude accusations. How awful for the children to hear such lies about their mother. The children . . .