The Wine Widow

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘But you?’

  ‘Where would I go?’ Compiain said, running a hand through his shock of upstanding hair. ‘This is my home, my wife and children are here, my father, my aunts and uncles …’

  ‘But, Arnaud! This friend of mine ‒’ she touched the letter ‒ ‘a very well informed man ‒ says there will be battles.’

  ‘Oh, well, a few cavalry troops riding down the vines and hacking at each other ‒’

  ‘No, no, war isn’t like that any more, my friend! They have great guns, that can destroy a house with one salvo. They say that Strasbourg is in ruins after the bombardment there.’

  ‘Huh,’ said her chief of cellar, ‘well, we’ll just go down in the caves, then, eh? There can be the worst thunderstorm in the world up above, but you don’t hear it in the cellars.’

  Nicole stared at him. He was, as Jean-Baptiste had once said, like a thistle ‒ skinny, wiry, with a bush of strong coarse hair that stood up like the purple petals of the flower. Nicole respected him thoroughly for his knowledge of the wine and his devotion to his work. She had never thought of him as heroic, however.

  ‘And how long do you imagine we could stay down there?’

  ‘Oh, indefinitely, I s’pose. There’s light and water ‒ it’d be cold, of course, we’d need lots of blankets. But so long as we took woollens and plenty of food, we could hold out for days, weeks even. Then we’d come out when the Germans had been chased away.’

  ‘You don’t want to move out until things quieten down?’

  He shook his head. ‘But you go, madame. It’s different for you.’

  How was it different for her? She was a native of the village of Calmady, just as Compiain was. She had loved and married the owner of the great house that belonged to the village. There she had borne his children, survived the first griefs of widowhood. Jean-Baptiste had lived and worked here.

  The wine that had given her prestige and money belonged here. It was as much part of the countryside as the people who tended the vines. Its elegance and sparkle were the pride of the Champagne region.

  So now she was to run away? Leave it all to the invaders? She pictured German lancers riding over her vineyards, drunken soldiers knocking bottles open to pour the rich champagne down their thirsty throats …

  ‘Thank you, Arnaud,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere.’

  He nodded. ‘No, best not. You want to be here to keep an eye on things, eh?’

  But she felt it her duty to convey the contents of the letter to her sister and her daughter. ‘If you want to leave, I think now is the time to go. Lord Grassington’s messenger will escort you.’

  ‘But where to, dear?’ Paulette quavered.

  ‘To Bienne, in Switzerland.’

  ‘Oh no! No, no! I couldn’t possibly leave France! My sons are here.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d rather go to Paris to join Edmond? I’m sure you’d be safe in Paris.’

  Paulette hesitated. She’d had no word from Edmond in over two weeks. ‘I’m not even sure he’s still there. The last time he wrote, he spoke of joining a student corps to go to the front …’

  ‘What about you, darling? Would you rather leave Tramont?’

  ‘You’re staying?’ Delphine inquired.

  ‘Yes, I want to try to make at least some wine this year ‒ otherwise it will be a total loss.’

  ‘Then I stay too,’ Delphine said, her chin coming up.

  They talked about it long into the night. The decision was that they would stay, relying on the fact that the Prussians were more likely to be fighting in the towns than in the countryside. Battles, if any ‒ and after all Gerrard’s prediction might be wrong ‒ were more likely to be at Chalons or Rheims.

  Nevertheless, it was good sense to make provision. Nicole had food taken down to the cellars: hams and smoked sausage and fish, potatoes, biscuit-bread, anything she could think of that would keep several days. The chill of the caves was ideal for such provisions. She also sent down all the spare blankets from the manor house.

  This was done rather than attempt to carry out the grape harvest as yet. The weather might yet improve. There might be a burst of sunshine to put some plumpness on the fruit. Such things had happened before: a poor outlook until the very end of August and then, in the first week of September, glowing sunshine and a sudden improvement in the grapes. The thinning of the leaves was carried out, to let what light there was help to sweeten the small bunches.

  In a way, it was a help to have the ‘siege preparations’ to take her mind off the disastrous harvest. But we’re not going to need any of this, she kept telling herself.

  She was wrong. Three days later, as the last week of August began, horsemen could be glimpsed scouting in the thickets along the road to Epernay. Then, in the distance, there was a sound like thunder.

  ‘The artillery!’ said Nicole.

  ‘My word, you were right, madame! They do sound as if they could knock a house down.’

  There were skirmishes between scouting parties on the outskirts of Calmady. The gun batteries were coming noticeably nearer. In the middle of the following night, shells began to shriek across the village. French infantry were marching along the road to the east; they were the target for the gunners, but it was difficult to find the range. The first shell that landed in Calmady destroyed four houses in the main street, killing most of the occupants.

  The villagers began to stream out of their homes. Safety for them lay in the cellars of Madame de Tramont. The women and children were quickly taken down in the lifts which Nicole had installed the previous year. The men had to go down by the steep staircases.

  Compiain decided not to take cover. ‘A few of us are going to be a welcome committee,’ he explained. ‘We’ve got some rifles the infantrymen have abandoned ‒’

  ‘Arnaud! You’re not a soldier!’

  ‘Right, madame. All the same, we can’t just let them take our homes, now can we?’

  Deep in the caves, nothing could be heard. From time to time one of the boys was sent to the entrance at ground level to find out what was happening. The reports for four days were of extended warfare, a regiment of infantry dug in at Calmady trying to hold up the German advance, Uhlans and cuirassiers in cavalry clashes, flames visible on the skyline from other villages besides Calmady.

  On the fifth day the gas supply was cut off. It came from Rheims by way of great pipes laid in the Champagne clay. Either the pipes had been fractured by mortars or the supply-station at Rheims had gone out of action.

  ‘Never mind, we’ve plenty of candles,’ Nicole said. She knew the passages and vaults of her cellars as well as she knew the Villa Tramont; she knew the contents of all the store cupboards as well as she knew the contents of the carefully stacked champagne bottles.

  Another day and a night went by. Young Jacques Lessouet went up to reconnoitre. ‘It’s gone quiet,’ he said when he came down again. ‘There’s flames still to be seen to the east ‒ I think it’s Pernigort burning. But I didn’t see any soldiers or hear any horses, and the guns are further away.’

  A sigh of relief ran through the cold, huddled crowd in the cellars. ‘Is it still raining?’ called a waggish old man from the back of the vault.

  ‘Yes, still raining!’

  In the morning they went up the stairs, by twos and threes. The pulleys that worked the lifts had been damaged, so it took a long time to help the old people and mothers with children up to the surface.

  It was a little after dawn. The sky had a watery brightness, the breeze was chill. A strange smell hung in the air ‒ carbide, gunsmoke, mingled with another they later learnt to know as the reek of dead horses.

  A goldfinch was fluttering round the ruined gantry-house, chirping as he picked seeds from a dock-plant. Otherwise there was a strange silence. Cautiously the villagers of Calmady began to move away from the entrance to the cellars. No one appeared to bar their way.

  ‘They’ve gone!’ cried a joyful voice.

&
nbsp; At once the young and able-bodied began to run for the estate entrance, to hurry back along the road to their homes. The servants of the Villa Tramont looked towards it, uncertain. Its high slate roofs could be seen above the trees. They appeared to be quite undamaged ‒ no holes to be seen.

  ‘Come along,’ Nicole said, and with either arm about her sister and her daughter, she set off. The housekeeper and the butler fell in behind her. She was amused to see the phalanx took up position strictly according to rank.

  They came to the house via the office of the chief cellarman and the out-buildings. Nothing stirred. Still they felt no desire to break out into loud talk; everything seemed caught in a web of quietude.

  One of the grooms said under his breath, ‘I believe they’ve taken our horses, damn them! I can’t hear a sound from the stables.’

  He moved off to take a look. The rest of the servants filtered slowly to their appointed places. Some went into the house by the back door.

  ‘Oh, how I long for a bath!’ murmured Delphine.

  ‘Go along in, then. They ought to get the stove going again soon, if the coal hasn’t been stolen. You go too, Paulie ‒ you look as if you could do with a good hot bowl of soup.’

  They left her, the girl with an arm about her aunt’s shoulders.

  Nicole stood looking at the house. How wonderful ‒ it seemed to be truly undamaged. She walked across the courtyard to the path leading round the house. At once she saw that some of her trees had been cut down ‒ presumably to allow line-of-sight for gun placement. She bit her lip.

  But if that were the only thing they’d lost, she had nothing to complain of.

  She came to the front court. The door of the house, she noticed, stood open. Looters? Perhaps. But before she went indoors, she would go out to the drive for a look at the rest of the park.

  She went across the courtyard, under the porte cochère. It was shadowy there, the morning sun shining at an angle across its openings. She walked out into the drive, momentarily blinded by the light.

  She blinked.

  Sitting his horse with perfect composure, a Prussian cavalryman in a spiked helmet was regarding her with interest.

  Chapter 22

  ‘Good morning,’ said the officer.

  ‘Good morning,’ Nicole said, too taken aback to do anything but respond.

  ‘May I know your name?’

  ‘I am Nicole de Tramont.’

  ‘Ah, The Widow Tramont herself? How delightful to meet you. I am Lieutenant von Kravensfeldt.’ He was speaking fluent though accented French. Now he called a command in German, and a corporal detached himself from a group standing by their horses further up the drive, to take his reins. He dismounted.

  ‘I was about to go indoors. Shall we enter together?’ He offered his arm.

  Nicole stood still. Was she being asked to play hostess to the enemy?

  ‘Come,’ he urged. ‘I must inspect the house. I’m attached to the staff of Duke William of Mecklenburg, who must soon move out of his quarters in Rheims to accommodate His Majesty. I thought perhaps he might take up residence here.’

  ‘Rheims?’ faltered Nicole. ‘You’ve captured Rheims?’

  ‘Rheims surrendered without a fight, madame. Unfortunately some madman blew up the powder magazine as we were taking over from the French garrison, killing and injuring a great many. Your General Theremin himself has been badly wounded ‒ I tell you this so that you will not believe the rumour now circulating, which is that we Germans wickedly blew up the town when it had accepted occupation.’

  As he spoke he was gently leading the way to the front entrance of the manor house. He went in ahead of her. She noticed that none of his men followed ‒ it seemed they expected no trouble, and they were right, for though the servants were startled into protest at his appearance, they at once obeyed when he asked to be shown round the house.

  Nicole waited until he returned. ‘I shall recommend the house to His Grace. It remains to be seen whether he will take it. He may prefer to remain closer to Rheims ‒’

  ‘I don’t wish to have German officers in my home!’ Nicole said, having recovered from the first astonishment.

  ‘No doubt. Rest easy, madame.’ He was smiling, almost in sympathy. ‘We shall not be here long ‒ the King of Prussia and his staff will be moving to Versailles very soon.’

  ‘Versailles?’

  ‘Oh yes. He wishes to be closer to Paris to direct the ‒’

  ‘It’s a lie! You haven’t taken Versailles!’

  The officer made a little grimace. He was very young, scarcely more than a boy ‒ tall, fair-skinned though his hair showed dark brown under his spiked helmet.

  ‘Madame, few people have ever called me a liar. But I make allowances for your natural bewilderment. To explain your situation to you, let me just say that our forces are in possession of most of the north of France and are about to take Metz and Sedan ‒’

  ‘Sedan … I have a son ‒ I mean, my sister has a son …’

  ‘At Sedan?’ He smiled. ‘My congratulations, madame. It will be a fine fight, I assure you. Well, thank you for your hospitality. I will make my report to the Duke.’

  He gave a little stiff bow and saluted by touching the rim of his helmet. He turned smartly about and was gone. She heard him ride out, accompanied by his escort of cavalry who had come into the courtyard to await him.

  Delphine and her aunt came running down to the hall. ‘I saw him from the windows!’ Paulette cried. ‘I hid in a cupboard!’

  Nicole was almost angry. ‘And you, Delphine? Did you hide?’

  ‘No, Mama, I was in my room when he was shown in ‒ I simply turned my shoulder on him, he apologised and backed out.’

  ‘Why was he here? Does it mean our troops are gone, Nicci?’

  ‘It seems so …’

  In the days that followed they pieced together the story of what had happened to Calmady. Fourteen men of the village had been killed trying to defend the place after the French troops had withdrawn to Pernigord ‒ among them Arnaud Compiain. ‘I don’t understand it,’ his father, now a very old man, said in broken tones. ‘Arnaud was never a lad to enjoy a fight …’ Many of the houses had been destroyed in the course of close fighting. The vineyards had been trampled down or ploughed up by shells, or sometimes cut to pieces by shrapnel. The smashed red Pinot grapes lay like clots of blood on the white clay.

  Now, it seemed, the German forces were following the course of the Marne and the Seine, on their way to Paris.

  ‘Edmond is in Paris!’

  ‘And so is Old Madame.’ Nothing had been heard from either of them in weeks, but with the postal system and communications generally in such a bad state, it had caused no special anxiety. As for the news about Sedan, Nicole kept that to herself.

  But not for long. On Monday the 5th September the Journal de la Marne came out with a single-sheet newspaper. It was of course officially allowed by the occupation force, yet somehow the news it contained had the ring of truth.

  Sedan had been taken, after a battle lasting through the 31st August and the 1st September. The entire army of General Macmahon ‒ eighty-four thousand men, two thousand seven hundred officers, thirty-nine generals ‒ had capitulated. With them went the general himself and the Emperor Napoleon III.

  When the copies reached Calmady, groups gathered to read them in what remained of the inn, and on street corners. ‘It’s not true! The Emperor a prisoner? The army would never allow anyone to take the Emperor!’

  There was no way of knowing. All the information they had at present came from sources permitted by the German army. Yet Nicole had a terrible feeling that what they were reading was the truth.

  A party of Uhlans was quartered on the Villa Tramont. No officer, only two sergeants in charge.

  ‘What about the Duke?’ Nicole asked.

  ‘Duke? What duke?’ They spoke very poor French, and Nicole very poor German. When she at last mentioned the name Mecklenburg, they laughed. �
�Versailles!’ they said, pointing eastwards.

  They took up their domicile in the stables and outbuildings. They were no trouble. In fact, they made themselves useful carrying baskets of grapes to the weighing points and helping to push them down the slope to the press.

  For although most of the harvest was lost, Nicole had determined to do what she could to save the vintage of 1870. A bitter vintage it would be, and never likely to be raised in a toast at a happy event. The harvest was small, the grapes of poor quality, the resulting wine was below the high standard of the Champagne region. But Nicole was determined to put it into her cellars. That was her business ‒ the production of wine.

  ‘How can you be so heartless!’ Delphine cried. ‘All this time, no news of Robert ‒ he may be dead, he may be a prisoner in enemy hands! And all you can think of is the wine!’

  ‘Delphie, there is nothing I can do about any of that. But at least I can make wine.’

  ‘It’s disgusting, obscene! I wish every single vine had been cut to pieces!’

  Nicole merely shook her head. It was useless to reason with her while she was in this state.

  The Uhlans received orders to move on. They said a polite goodbye. One of them kissed one of the housemaids heartily and gave her a button from his tunic as a keepsake. Nicole presented them with some bottles of the newly made still wine. ‘You’re giving them our wine?’ Delphine cried in fury.

  ‘It’s all it’s fit for ‒ to give away to invaders,’ Nicole said with a grim smile.

  New soldiers appeared to take up residence at Villa Tramont. These were older men, foot soldiers. By and by it emerged they were territorials from the state of Baden, just across the Rhine from Alsace. They spoke passable French and seemed very pleased to have such comfortable quarters as warm stables and grain stores. These were to be the long-term occupation force, allowing the attack regiments to concentrate on Paris.

  Paris was now under siege. Rumours came and went: that the Germans had bombarded the city, that Notre Dame was in flames, that no, the Germans had agreed to respect the holy cathedral, that they had allowed a certain number of Parisians to leave, that they had taken them prisoner, that they had sent them on to Evreux under safe-passage, that a Republican government under Gambetta was now carrying on the war with a new army …