“Listen,” he pleaded, “I understand this sounds like madness to you, but Monsieur du Herle testified up, down, backwards, and forwards, to the Marquis’s good and honorable character. You’ll live in luxury, the envy of every village girl. Besides, you won’t be so far away. You’ll go to live at the Marquis’s hunting lodge in the forest, where he spends most of his time. He has houses in Annecy and Paris too, but Monsieur du Herle said he doesn’t mix with society. The Marquis means for our arrangement to be perfectly discreet, so there’ll be no shame for our family or harm to our reputation.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Do you think the villagers won’t find out?”
He gave a weak shrug. “I don’t know how long we can truly keep it a secret, but the arrangement he’s proposed would keep us afloat until I see some of my own money again. Otherwise –” he leaned back and squeezed his eyes shut – “it’s possible I might be called before a magistrate and end up in prison. That’s the point things have come to. If I go to prison, we won’t just be shamed, we’ll be beggars. I know I’m asking a frightful sacrifice of you.”
I closed my eyes. “This is monstrous. I’m not some rare book you can simply sell to get out of debt.”
“There’s more, I’m afraid. More than all I’ve told you so far. The Piedmont Easter –”
“What about it? That was a century ago. Surely you don’t think –” My mind raced through the possibilities, and I remembered the winter nights before the fire when the pastor used to tell stories of the bloody massacres of the Piedmont Vaudois. The stories had made little Aimée weep and Valentin’s face turn sickly green, conjuring visions of infants skewered with spears, children torn to pieces in front of their parents, girls and women violated, and the survivors driven into the upper valleys in midwinter, forced to build houses in the snow while more of them froze to death.
“I never knew this,” Father said, “but Monsieur du Herle showed me the documents, and it’s beyond dispute. All these years, our villages have bordered on the domain of the Marquis’s family. We remained hidden and safe while the southern Vaudois were tortured, pillaged, and slaughtered, all because we were under the old Marquis’s protection.”
“What – do you mean to say the Marquis helped us? The same Marquis?”
“It appears the lords of Boisaulne had a long tradition of tolerance, and they gave us sanctuary without our even knowing it. The present Marquis has never alerted the parish or the governor to the fact that we don’t pay tithes, or that our villages are more than just a couple of scattered farms by the alpages. If it weren’t for him, we’d be burdened with the same wretched church taxes as the Vaudois in the south. Your husband was arrested for selling anti-clerical treatises and political libelles and helping smuggle them across the borders of Savoy into France. If I were called before a magistrate … it might take very little to spark an inquiry and new persecutions. It’s not a good time to lose an influential neighbor’s favor.”
I felt faint. The hour was growing late, and my mind was clouded with weariness. “Did Monsieur du Herle threaten us? That our villages would lose the Marquis’s support if I didn’t agree to be his … his kept woman, his femme entretenue, I guess you’d call it?”
“You’re twisting my words all out of proportion. He made no threats. He simply told me the history, as a way of explaining that the Marquis is trustworthy and that we have reason to be grateful to him and to believe he’s acting in good faith.”
I was so tired that I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. As angry and wretched as I’d felt when I was sixteen and Father told me I had to marry the pastor and live with him above the bookshop in Annecy, this betrayal was a thousand times worse. I knew well enough now what marriage was, that it meant one’s body was not one’s own. Beyond that, it meant living to serve a husband who saw you as housemaid, mother, and child all in one. It meant hiding your feelings and thoughts and wishes, and that everything you did and said had to be guided by what pleased and didn’t anger your husband. Now not only would I have to have to bear those burdens again, but my children would be taken from me and I would be ruined as well.
Father was crying too. “I know it’s nothing like what you imagined for yourself. It’s not at all what I wanted for you, either. I just can’t see any other way. I must leave the choice up to you, but consider all that depends on it. Won’t you at least meet the man? We still have some time to think it over before Monsieur du Herle arrives tomorrow to fetch you.”
“Tomorrow!”
“Shh, please, just sleep on it for now, and we can talk more in the morning.”
Father got up heavily from his chair and lumbered through the door to his room at the front of the house. I went to the back room I shared with the children, but I didn’t undress. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, waiting until I could be sure Father would have fallen asleep next to Edmée. Then I went back to the main room in the darkness and found a couple of empty sacks. Silently, feeling my way in the dark, I packed a kitchen knife and what food I could find: hard bread, cheese, some carrots and scallions, a flint and some candles. I returned to the children’s room and packed a few clothes. Then I woke Valentin and Aimée and told them we were running away.
II
God was merciful and Aimée didn’t cry when I woke her and explained that the three of us were in danger and had to leave at once. I didn’t worry for Valentin; he was frightened but obedient. Moonlight outside filtered down through the tall pines to light our way, along with the lantern and candles I’d stolen. I opened the door of the barn attached to the side of the house and found the horse belonging to the Marquis de Boisaulne, the one M. du Herle had lent to father. The stallion was white with a silvery mane and gentle. He didn’t shy away from my touch, but ate a carrot greedily from my hand.
It was fitting that my would-be enslaver’s horse would aid us in our escape. In two days’ time we would be in Genève. I could sell the horse and tackle for perhaps as much as five hundred livres. We might live in a cheap boarding house for a year on that money, but our funds would run out eventually. Instead, I would visit the offices of the publishing houses from whose catalogs my late husband used to order, and I would set up my own accounts with them. The illicit works that landed the pastor in prison fetched the best profit, so I would specialize in those. I’d start as a traveling book peddler, like the ones who used to compete with my husband’s shop. I wasn’t afraid of the mountain paths that skirted the customs offices on the borders between Savoy and France. If I were stopped, no one would suspect me, a woman traveling with children. When I had saved enough, I would open my own shop as a widow, under a false name in some town or other where no one would know me. I wouldn’t be a burden on Father anymore.
The horse was fine and strong enough that the two children and I and our sacks all fit on his back easily, riding astride in the dark. It was less than an hour at a careful, slow walk to the hamlet of Nant-Pierre and Hortense’s farmhouse. Usually my younger sister, Françoise-Angélique, was the one I confided in, but her twin baby girls were barely four weeks old, and her health had been delicate since the birth. I would have to take my chances with Hortense and hope that, for once, she would take my side.
I brought the horse into Hortense’s barn and tied him up with the other animals, while the children waited. The poor things were fainting with weariness. We found the side door to the house unlatched and went in. I lit a candle from the embers in the hearth, and by its light I found two old woolen blankets in a chest. I made an uncomfortable bed for us on the rug before the hearth, and we fell into an exhausted sleep.
I woke several times through the rest of the night, my dreams troubled and my limbs numb from the hard floor, but Valentin and Aimée slept soundly. I was lying awake and alert when Hortense discovered us at dawn. She cried out in surprise before I sat up and she recognized me.
“Violaine, what on earth?” she said softly.
I put my finger to my lips and pointed to th
e children still sleeping. I slid out of the blankets and stood up. “Come,” I whispered, “let’s go into the barn. I can help you with the milking and I’ll tell you everything.”
Arm in arm we went through the door of the kitchen into the barn that adjoined the house, and while I helped her milk the cows and goats, feed the pig and the chickens, and gather eggs, I told her the story and my plans for Genève. I begged her to lend me enough to pay for food and lodging for the next few days, to tide us over until we could sell the horse. She said little at first, only listening, asking questions, making me repeat myself, and shaking her head. I could have wished for more sympathy and outrage from her. She didn’t like the Genève plan one bit, it was clear. But she agreed to speak to her husband, Pierre-Joseph, on my behalf.
We went back inside to give the children and Pierre-Joseph their breakfast and then served ourselves. Aimée and Valentin joked and squabbled with their cousins, Ronald and Jacquot, and left with them to take the cows to the pasture. Hortense repeated all that I’d told her to Pierre-Joseph. I had left out nothing, sure of being in the right. I hoped to leave soon, for the daylight was wasting and I wanted to get to Genève before anyone could come after us.
“Well, that takes the cake,” Pierre-Joseph said finally. “Running off like a scared chicken, straight into a fox’s den. You’d get eaten whole in Genève. What makes you think I’d put up money so you could shame your family and end up dead in a gutter?”
Before I could respond, Hortense added, “Really, it’s monstrously selfish, Violaine. How could you even think of doing that to the children? Father must be at his wit’s end to accept an offer like that. Then you torment him and make it all the worse by running away, when it was all your fault in the first place.”
I was almost too astonished to speak. “My fault?”
“You refused three different marriage offers, all made in good faith, and from perfectly good families, all of them. Any one of them would have eased Father’s mind, and you and the children would have been settled. He might not even have had to go on that accursed journey if it hadn’t been for you draining his money and being a constant source of trouble.”
“And if I understand right,” Pierre-Joseph added, “if you don’t go, we could all be punished with new taxes like the southern Vaudois, or worse, who knows? And you want to steal a horse too, and break the law like an outright criminal, and drag us into it. All while your father’s just trying save us.”
“I always knew you were prideful,” Hortense said, “but this is beyond arrogant. How bad could life be if you’re the companion of a marquis?”
“But we wouldn’t be married,” I said. “Does no one care that I’d be living with a man in sin? Would anyone even still speak to me here in the villages if they knew?”
“Pearls and silver cover a multitude of sins,” Hortense said wryly. “But you said yourself, Father intends that no one will find out. You and I both know Father’s done nearly the same thing himself, keeping Edmée with him. He’s as kind to her as to a wife, and she’s been as good to us as a mother. Do you think you’re above them, too good to live as Edmée does?”
Of course she would have to bring that up. I twisted away from them in my seat, folded my arms tightly across my chest, and looked down at the floor. “Of course not, but this is different. No one knows this man at all. I’m being sent off like a lamb to the slaughter.”
She puffed out her breath in exasperation. “You’re always so melodramatic about everything. That’s your problem. You imagine the worst, but it might not be so bad. I don’t believe Father would have agreed to it if he didn’t think you’d be well-cared for. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I can’t support you putting Father, yourself, or the rest of us in danger. It’s no easy thing, but for the good of all us you ought to accept the arrangement. Better to be dishonored than to starve or end up in prison.”
In tears again, I felt a tug at my sleeve. It was Aimée, who burst into tears herself at the sight of me crying.
“Maman, I don’t want to leave here. Couldn’t we live here with Tante Hortense forever?”
Hortense squeezed her into a hug and pulled her up onto her lap, comforting her. Outside, I could hear Valentin’s joyful shouts as he played with Hortense’s boys. I felt defeated and hopeless, and for the first time, I began to imagine giving in, walking willingly into this nightmare from which I could see no immediate escape. My mind revolted at the truth, but I forced myself to face it. Aimée and Valentin could be happy here. What life would it be for them, living on the road with me trying to scrabble out a living as a book peddler in the mountains and towns, keeping one step ahead of the police and the customs agents? Not to mention that for committing the crime of horse theft, I could be imprisoned or sentenced to labor in a workhouse. Even if I stayed out of prison, I’d be entangling myself in risky financial investments, just as my father had done.
I shuddered and imagined the alternative. Shut up in some old aristocrat’s hunting lodge in the woods, with no one to protect or rescue me if he turned out to be wicked or violent, subject to this man’s whims, however depraved and cruel – to being shamed, degraded, and abused. I’d read certain books in my late husband’s shop, books he had stocked not only illegally but also hypocritically, given his piety – books he sold only to customers who ordered them in advance or asked for them by name, that cost double or triple the price of ordinary ones. Those books, titillating as they were, had given me an alarming impression of the proclivities of aristocrats and clerics.
Or perhaps … perhaps the Marquis would be kind. Perhaps the stories I had read were only that, stories meant to shock and arouse, obscene exaggerations. Perhaps I would only need to perform the ordinary duties of a wife, and would merely have to endure it, as I had endured Pastor Bergeret’s weekly attentions on Sabbath evenings, and then I would be left alone. I might even have servants to do the household work. And perhaps he wouldn’t be as old or ugly as all that. Perhaps we could even have conversations – he must be an educated man, after all. And if he truly were cruel, I could simply run away and then face whatever consequences might follow. He could hardly keep me prisoner there forever, could he? I could at least meet him, as Father had begged me to. In the end, he might not even like me and might change his mind once he had met me.
“I’m going out for a walk,” I said. “I need time to think, alone.”
They traded glances and watched worriedly as I went out, but didn’t rise to stop me. My feet took me around the side of the house to the barn door. How I wished I could saddle the Marquis’s magnificent white horse and ride away into the woods, gallop far from all this trouble and confusion, high up into the mountains, and live in a cave like a hermit. I wouldn’t last long once winter came, but never mind, let the cold take me for all I cared. I started to compose a poem in my mind about how I would return to haunt my family as an angry shade, one of those spirits that wailed when the wind whipped through the valleys during the winter storms.
But when I reached the barn door, I found Pierre-Joseph had tied it shut with a tightly knotted cord. I’d have needed a knife to cut it open. I had packed a knife in one of my sacks, but it was inside the house. Just then the sound of clopping hooves and neighing horses came from the lane. I peered around the side of the house and saw that it was Father riding our old mare, Claudette. Another man rode beside him on a black horse. Pierre-Joseph and Hortense came out of the house, spoke to them, and pointed them toward me. They rode up to where I stood, and Father climbed down from Claudette with a jump to embrace me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other man climb down out of his saddle slowly, averting his gaze from Father’s emotional display.
Violaine, how could you?” Father said, low enough that the other man wouldn’t hear. “Edmée and I were so worried when we woke up this morning and found you gone.” He drew back to look me in the face. “But Hortense says you’ve come to your senses? She believed she’d persuaded you.”
I drew in a deep breath, my heart pounding. “Yes, I’ll go to the Marquis. I’ll do as you ask.” I couldn’t bring myself to apologize for running away, nor to return his embrace.
“This is Monsieur du Herle,” Father said, putting a hand on the shoulder of his companion. “He’s come to accompany you there.”
M. du Herle cleared his throat and looked guilty and uncomfortable. He had light gray-blue eyes, almost silver, just as I remembered from the shop. They were fixed intently on me now, as then. The Marquis’s pimp, I reminded myself. His procurer. For an involuntary instant I found myself trying to decide whether he was handsome. He was a lean man of about thirty years, of medium height. His clothes were well-tailored and elegant but muted and dark in cut and color. The fine silver-handled dress sword of a gentleman hung at his waist in a richly worked silver scabbard. The skin on his cheeks was clean-shaven and slightly pock-marked; he had high cheekbones, a narrow chin, light reddish-brown hair under his hat, and a slightly bulbous nose. Both his ears were pierced with ebony rings. No, he wasn’t strikingly handsome, but it wasn’t an unpleasant face to look at, and I liked the modest turn of his lips, as though he were about to deny a compliment.
“Good afternoon, Madame Bergeret.” He bowed and I was struck by a certain shyness in his gesture. “If you’re ready we could leave at once and arrive before dark. If you need anything from your father’s house we can have it sent on later, but the manor is well-provisioned, and I think you’ll find all you need there. The Marquis wishes you to be comfortable.”
The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment Page 2