Even though she had fallen to living beneath herself, Jeanne was well aware that it was breeding and instruction that distinguished one class from another. She was determined that her children would retain the bourgeois values in hand with the religious doctrine taught by Calvin.
It had always been an ancestral satisfaction that her family had been in the law or in the cloth. Her grandfather had been a second consul of Montauban and member of the now abolished Huguenot consistory, whose job it was to oversee people’s moral attitudes and behaviour. Oh, if he could see them now, she often thought.
There had been whispers and fears that the new Catholics would revert to their former religion and rise up against state repression, drawing in surrounding support of Protestant countries into another bloody war of religion. Jeanne did not want war, no more so than anyone else. There had been enough horrid tales of butchery from the last century which were still within living memory when she was a child.
But the King had been clever enough to make the Edict of Fontainebleau appear that Protestants were still tolerated in France, and their rights to property protected. Surrounding states would thus not be officially offended and their heads of state would be able to save face against their detractors. What is more, England now had a Catholic king.
April was also the time for a good spring cleaning and to beat out the bed bugs. Jeanne had kept them at bay through the winter by dabbing wine vinegar onto the skin of her children. But of late, Paul had developed a rash.
Now that she had recovered her figure, Jeanne was sprightly as ever. With the help of Marie, she had managed to wash all the bed linen in vinegar and lavender, and then leave it out to dry and to bleach before the sun turned cold. Despite the fatigue of the long day’s work, she felt an appeasement within that she had not experienced since before the soldiers rapped on her door in rue de la Serre. The farmhouse felt much nicer, and the children’s clothes that her sister had managed to retrieve were neatly folded away in anticipation of the change of season.
Jeanne sat at the kitchen table opposite the south-facing window. It looked onto the little courtyard and barn where Marie and the children were rounding up the chickens into their pen. Nowadays she much preferred to write in the light of day, and in less than an hour it would be dark.
Glancing out of the window had become a habit now that Lulu was more often outside than in. Jeanne always directed her eyes first at the water well which she had warned Lizzy and Paul time again not to let Lulu go near. Reassured to see the girls together chasing the last chickens, she fell back to perusing her short account of life on the farm. She knew it would bolster her husband to know they at least were well. It would also soften the blow of her sister’s abjuration, she thought, as again she dipped her quill in the oak gall ink.
Suzanne had recently announced her conversion in a letter in which she also related her inner turmoil. The growing fear of a Protestant revolt had led the authorities to increase their vigilance of new Catholic households. The penalty for clandestine meetings or even being caught reading from a reformist Bible was severe. One such case had recently come to light at a chateau where both lord and male servants were given life on a galley ship, and the ladies and maids a life sentence in prison. The poor children were sent to convents, the rich to be raised by Catholic foster parents using the proceeds of the sale of their parents’ properties, the best part of which went to the royal treasury.
Fearing for his wife, his son and his heritage, Robert had given Suzanne an ultimatum. Either she would have to sign the abjuration certificate or she would have to leave the country as soon as possible. Papers could be obtained but if caught at the frontier the penalty would be no less than life. Suzanne chose to stand by her husband.
The worst was when she had been obliged to perform what the authorities termed as the Easter duty, which meant taking the sacrament. Was it not an insult to Christ to read in the scriptures of the necessity of such superfluous rituals when what is really taught was love and faith?
Jeanne looked up again from her writing. She immediately noticed a hen strutting proudly along the ledge of the well, and Lizzy and Paul with Marie. But where was Lulu? She pushed away the wooden stool from under her and called out through the open window.
‘Lizzy, Marie. Where’s Lulu?’
Immediately, everyone started searching and calling out. Marie ran to the well. But before Jeanne could reach the back door a patting on the other side of it brought her instant relief. Jeanne opened the door, scooped up her young daughter, embraced her and said, ‘Louise, there you are, my little angel. Go see Lizzy, darling.’
From the doorsill she stepped into view of the others near the barn, ‘Found her!’ she sang out. And to her eldest daughter she said, ‘Lizzy, I told you not to let her out of your sight, you know how fast she can run now.’
‘But I boarded over the well, mother,’ said Paul in defence. It wasn’t the first time Lulu’s disappearance had sent them all into a panic.
‘Never mind, do as I say, please, children. Keep together at all times, you must always stay together. Now, I must finish my letter to your father.’
‘Yes, mother,’ said Paul and Elizabeth.
‘Come on, Lulu, come and feed the conilhs,’ said Marie using the patois for rabbits.
*
After supper, with the children asleep in the room next door, the maid ironed the last of the fresh linen. While making up a parcel for her husband Jeanne tried out some patois on Marie. It was an amusement to them both.
Marie had been in awe when Jeanne first arrived at the farm, not knowing what to expect from such a lady. But awe quickly turned to admiration on witnessing how Jeanne retained her dignity in adversity despite having fallen so low.
The maid, a plain thinking, plain-faced girl of twenty, no longer regretted not leaving the farm with the previous tenants, a Huguenot farmer and his wife who had fled to Geneva before the previous spring to keep their religion. It was not often that a peasant girl could observe the ways of a lady so closely. Despite her abjuration, Marie’s Protestant faith was stronger than ever and the frequent evening readings of the Bible with Jeanne comforted her. It was satisfying that, despite their condition, God’s law had the same resonance with them both. In this they were equal.
It had even bemused the girl to see Jeanne getting her hands into the washing, though she would not allow her to fetch the water, nor the milk, it simply was not right and did not respect the established order of things. A lady of quality could not pretend to be a peasant nor vice versa. Nevertheless, Jeanne’s attempt at speaking words in patois really did make her laugh out loud like a donkey.
‘What is the word for acorn,’ said Jeanne smiling at the acorn faces that Paul had made for the parcel. Each acorn had been carefully selected from big to small to represent a member of their family. There were six of them.
‘Aglan,’ said Marie.
Jeanne repeated the word and added the happy acorns to the writing material contained in a wooden case, along with a blanket, the previous one having been stolen.
The peasants and crofters in the surrounding farmsteads who had taken on the cultivation of Robert’s fields were mostly converted Huguenots. But like Marie, they were Huguenots to the core all the same. Despite some marginal jealousy, Jeanne was nonetheless mostly among people of her faith.
Some of them offered her produce from their winter store. Spontaneous generosity? Or was it to appease their own mortal souls for their lack of resistance? Jeanne neither condemned nor condoned. Some wanted to justify their abjuration, but nobody could look her in the eye and explain they had converted through fear of losing their livelihood, their heritage, their children, when she, a well-born lady, had already given up so much more.
Whatever their reasons, Jeanne accepted their produce as a manifestation of God’s grace, though always insisted on paying. No, she would not accept charity so easily. It would be like profiteering on poor souls in turmoil, and besides, there may
come a time when she would truly need it.
Jeanne slipped her letter inside the parcel which she fastened with some string for it to be ready when the weaver arrived.
Monsieur Cordelle, who was in his mid-thirties, travelled to Cahors once every few weeks to sell his cloth at the market, there being fewer weavers in Cahors than in and around Montauban where the famous cadis and the gros de Montauban were produced.
A specific rap at the door announced the weaver. He deliberately used the same codified knock every time he came, and the maid opened the door without a second thought. She had to suppress a scream, however, when she saw, not the squat, jovial figure of Monsieur Cordelle, but a tall stooping frame that filled the doorway. Noticing the weaver standing behind, she then realised it was Monsieur Robert Garrisson, the owner whom she had seen close-up only a few times during her life at the farm.
‘Robert! What is it?’ said Jeanne as he doffed his hat and walked into the room. Cordelle followed behind. With Robert’s presence, Jeanne noticed that the chairs and the table, indeed the room, suddenly looked drab and confined. She dared not think how she must look, probably like a farmer’s wife.
‘I came as soon as I could.’
‘It is Suzanne, isn’t it?’
‘No, dear Jeanne, it is not Suzanne,’ said Robert in earnest. ‘I have come to save you from prison. They are coming here at first light to arrest you and take the children.’
He was relieved to get it out quickly; there was no point beating about the bush. But he had been wondering how he would tell her since his contact at the town hall gave him the information that very afternoon. He was relieved too that the flash of alarm that darted through her eyes immediately turned to steely determination.
‘They cannot!’
‘Alas, they can, Jeanne,’ said Robert. He wanted to console her in his arms but his upbringing forbade it. He continued compassionately. ‘They can, since the decree of January which states that children under sixteen are to be brought up as Catholics, which means removing them from their Huguenot parents. I am so sorry, Jeanne. I am powerless.’
Powerless. The syllables hammered through her brain and seemed to flatten all hope. She brought her hands together in prayer, but her knees buckled beneath her. Robert and Monsieur Cordelle were able to catch hold of her in time and ease her into the spindle back chair by the oak trestle table.
‘Poor, poor, woman,’ said Monsieur Cordelle. ‘T’is too much for her to bear. I don’t know how she’s managed to take so many setbacks.’
‘Because she’s a saint woman, Monsieur,’ said Marie who then brought her lady round by dabbing salt and vinegar on her cheeks.
After a moment Robert spoke. ‘Jeanne, my dear Jeanne, you must leave. You must let Monsieur Cordelle take you to safety or they will lock you up in prison.’
‘My children, my babies,’ said Jeanne muffling her outburst with her hand so she did not wake up her children.
‘I promise I will arrange to take them into my care. Suzanne will look after them until we can get them to you.’
‘You are a good man, Robert, but you also promised to free Jacob. He is still in that foul dungeon after five months of captivity. I know it is beyond your control… but, no, I cannot leave my children. Please, do not ask that of me…’
‘Listen, dear Jeanne, here is a letter from your sister. Suzanne and I already spoke about this eventuality when the decree was published last January. As a new Catholic, I will have the power to take them under my wing. We have both taken the Easter sacrament. There is no reason for the priest to put us on his list of bad Catholics.’
‘Don’t tell me that is why Suzanne abjured.’
‘No, not only. But she knew you would not. And there were other reasons I imposed too, I confess.’
Jeanne clasped her hands together and closed her eyes. She said, ‘I will take them with me away from here.’
‘They will never survive the journey,’ said Robert, ‘not on the run.’
‘And what with the lambing season well underway,’ said Cordelle, ‘the wolves are hungrier than ever, they smell blood. You’d need a good guide.’
Robert knew about the human mind, he knew the sacrifice Jeanne was capable of for her children’s well-being. He said, ‘I am sorry I have been unable to prepare you for this calamity, I have only just found out myself. I came immediately. But alas, you cannot help your children in prison, Jeanne, nor Jacob for that matter. You must go into hiding. Please, Jeanne, I know how hard this must be, but it is the only way to spare Lizzy of the convent and Paul of the Jesuits.’
Jeanne held her face in her hands. Robert was right, she could not expect her children to go into hiding, let alone flee into the wilderness. And if she stayed she would be imprisoned which would be of no good to anyone.
‘They are afraid, Jeanne, that all those who refuse to abjure will stir up Protestant feeling, and cause a revolt. They won’t let you stay here any longer.’
At length Jeanne began to gather a few essential effects.
She had found refuge here in her cosy retreat. From here she had been able to relieve some of the misery of her husband. She felt it must have been a happy home the farmers had made. It smelt and felt wholesome, like freshly baked bread and clean linen and lavender. Why o why had this injustice fallen upon their community? Why this persecution when Catholics and Protestants had lived in peace together, traded together? Except for the odd spurt of aggression from high-blooded students, their lives had been good, the plain was fertile—indeed there could not be a plain more fertile on God’s earth. Why did men have to ruin it all?
She spent the whole night preparing to go. Every time, ten, twenty times perhaps, she was on the verge of leaving when she put down her sack of effects, and went quietly back to the bedroom to kiss her sleeping children: Lizzy, her little lady; Lulu, her sweet precious; Paul, such a responsible little boy; and her youngest, whom she time and again plucked from Marie’s arms and cradled through the night as she went from one child to the next, touching their arms, kissing their foreheads as they slept.
Despite Robert’s reassurances, as the night began to grow pale, she still could not bring herself to leave them. It was like having her heart wrenched from her chest.
‘We really must go now, Madame Delpech,’ said the weaver. The cockerel would soon crow, the soldiers would soon come.
Weighed down with fatigue and heartache, to Robert’s relief at last she passed her baby to the maid, and pulled herself away from the farmhouse.
Robert gave instructions to Marie. He then accompanied Jeanne in Monsieur Cordelle’s cart as far as the weaver’s cottage where, to avoid rousing suspicions, he had left his own coach. Robert reiterated his reassurances and rode back to Montauban to prepare a case to take custody of the children.
The sky was already half lit over the furrowed field bordered with hedging; there was no need for the weaver to take a lamp to lead Jeanne to a small farm building where he sometimes worked. It contained a workshop with a spinning wheel, a loom, a table, and a bed ingeniously flattened upright against the wall. He pulled down the bed and removed the wooden partition behind it. This revealed a recess – containing a stool and a bucket – of about three yards wide and two yards deep.
‘I am sorry, Madame Delpech, this is where you will have to stay during the day. No one must see you. No one must suspect you are here. You must only come out at night.’
Jeanne thanked him. She knew he would be tortured and publicly hanged if caught harbouring a Huguenot.
10
August and September 1687
On the evening of the 25th August, a bedraggled company of prisoners rode their pack-donkeys into the fortified Mediterranean city of Aigues-Mortes. Jacob’s hands were blistered from the rough cord of the primitive bridle, and his body ached. His clothes had become three sizes too large, and he felt his bones with the donkey’s every stride.
He and the rest of the detainees had ridden without stirrups from
Montpellier to the walled city, under the escort of fusiliers on foot and archers on horseback. At their head rode the subdelegate of the intendant of Languedoc. The fourteen captives, men and women of every age and rank, did not look like criminals at all. In fact, despite their visible signs of fatigue and wear, they resembled the townsfolk who watched them pass, mostly in silence, through the crowded lanes of the newly confirmed papist town. And yet, by law, criminals they were. Guilty of favouring their conscience over the King’s divine will.
They were the resistants, secretly envied by those who looked on, by those who, for whatever reason, lacked vocation or strength of faith to remain Protestant.
‘Look at the poor wretches,’ said a stocky man with burly forearms unable to keep his thoughts to himself. He had paused with his handcart at the sight of the procession. The man, whose name was Jean Fleuret, secretly said a prayer asking for forgiveness for his own sins, and to give strength to these righteous convicts.
‘Ay, I wager t’is another load for the great crossing,’ said the dapper grey-haired man standing next to him. Jean knew the man to be the haberdasher who twice took to the sea in his younger days, but had long since taken over his father’s boutique. The man continued in a reminiscent tone of voice, ‘T’is soon the season to be leaving. We used to get to the Canaries by mid-November, then crossed at Christmas tide. Best time for avoiding the hurricanes.’
‘See what you become, eh?’ said a rotund man with a potbelly of good living.
‘I ask you, sir,’ said Jean Fleuret pointing to one convict, ‘should we not be prouder riding with that poor fellow there than watching this procession of true faith like they were miscreants?’ He doffed his hat respectfully to the ragged Huguenot in question, then wheeled his cart full of carpentry tools alongside the company a short distance toward his home.
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