Sails snapped in the wind. Ratlines and rigging rattled. Vivienne leaned her hip against the rail and crossed her arms to warm her hands. “But the two of us will not be flocking together.”
He set his jaw. “And why not? What will you do, ma belle?”
She chafed at the term. No doubt it was Sybille he saw when he looked at her. Blame volleyed in Vivienne’s mind between Sybille, this man, and the untold numbers of others. If she never saw Armand again, she would not be sorry. Her gaze retreated from his and fixed instead upon a sailor cursing and swabbing the deck where a seasick passenger had missed his bucket.
“Then you must allow me to provide for your maintenance, as I would have for your mother,” Armand pressed.
Vivienne hooked an errant curl behind her ear. “Until the last two years of her life, Sybille did not feel an obligation toward me. Neither should you.”
“I must insist.”
“I must refuse.” She faced him, at the end of herself. “Regardless of how I must appear to you, I am not her proxy. Caring for me even materially will not atone for your past sins, or for hers.”
Something flashed in his watery eyes. Was it surprise? Anger? Regret? “You are so hard.” His voice was edged with steel.
She matched it with her own. “I have a head for business. I will make my own way.”
“You senseless, stubborn girl!” he cried. “Can you not see? I do not intend to conform you to your mother’s chosen lifestyle. My aim is to protect you from the need to follow suit!”
His outburst splashed coldly over her. “Tell me, Armand, if I depend on you for my security, is that not following in Sybille’s footsteps, too?”
He vented his frustration under his breath. She could not read the lines in his face. “Vivienne, you doubt my motives, but there is a reason you should believe that I want only what’s best for you.”
“Is that so?”
Armand coughed, then swallowed. “This is a conversation I have rehearsed many times in Le Havre while waiting for a suitable opportunity to speak with you.” He held his breath for a moment before exhaling. “Your middle name is Michelle. You reached your twenty-eighth birthday last month. Didn’t you?”
She stepped back. “It doesn’t matter.”
He grabbed her arm. “I think it does.”
“Let me go.”
“I won’t hurt you, just—I’ve known Sybille for many years. Thirty, to be exact.”
“Many men could say the same.” She wrenched her arm free and sailed beyond his reach.
He followed. “You must have wondered.”
“Don’t,” she said in a voice no one could hear. The ocean slapped the sides of the ship in rhythmic waves. She told herself she saw no resemblance, nothing familiar in his features. But then, it was Sybille’s likeness she bore so strongly, and she doubted there was any room left to even hint at the man responsible.
“Sybille was faithful to me back then,” Armand insisted.
Vivienne rounded on him. “You don’t know that.”
“And you don’t know that she wasn’t.”
“I have no father.” She cut him off, almost daring him to refute this. “At least, none that ever wanted me. I accepted that long ago.” Men who kept courtesans had their own wives and children. They did not need—did not want—any others.
He pulled his cloak tighter about him, and she noticed again the clean, trimmed fingernails on hands less callused than her own.
“Let it rest, Armand,” she urged. “Your guilt does not concern me. Do not pretend to be something you aren’t in order to ease your conscience, if you have any left.”
“You know very well I could be your father. Why do you deny the possibility?”
“Because it doesn’t matter.” She spoke over whispers of doubt.
“It matters to me.” But he left her, and Vivienne turned back toward the coast of France.
It was gone.
She stood staring into the distance until she forgot her face and hands were cold, and until thoughts of the man who claimed to be her father receded from the forefront of her mind.
It was over. She had escaped the revolution at last.
Little by little, the fear, the urgency, the constant vigilance that had been with her for so long, began to ease. In the void created by the loss of those constant companions, Vivienne felt as blank as the ocean expanding before her, nothing but blue sky and blue sea in each direction. She barely remembered who she had been before the revolution.
O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Vivienne let the words of the psalm rinse through her. Thou art acquainted with all my ways. Her ways had been so troubled lately. She had forgotten how simple things could fill her with joy, because nothing had been simple for years. Eyelids drifting closed, she remembered roses in gardens and vases. Tea in painted cups. The crunch of a perfect baguette. White lace, and all things beautiful, whether it was a sonnet or a sonata or a sunrise.
Vivienne leaned on the rail and peered at the water. It was not a blank expanse at all. Bubbles ruffled the surface, fish gleamed silver beneath. Pelicans plunged for prey, and dolphins leapt in graceful arcs. A new thing to love, then. The ocean. New beginnings. And the God who was sovereign over all.
Chapter Three
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
May 1794
Sunlight rippled over the Delaware River as Vivienne disembarked the schooner ahead of Armand, who engaged a stevedore to convey his trunks from the ship. For five weeks, sails flapped, waves slapped, and rigging and timber creaked with every breath of wind. Now that the constant rocking beneath her feet had ceased, it seemed the rest of her world had tilted.
Church spires, not guillotines, gleamed above redbrick buildings. Sea gulls looped overhead in a sky of brilliant blue. The shouts of dockworkers and the groaning of chains and anchors filled her ears as she put the wharf behind her.
Armand had made arrangements to stay with a friend who’d arrived in Philadelphia two years ago and now had his own home. Still, he’d insisted on sharing a carriage with her until she was safely in her own lodgings, as she had refused to join him in his.
A light carriage pulled near, and she hailed the driver. “I’m looking for a pension. Could you take us?”
With a broad, friendly smile, the ebony-skinned man said he could. “In the French Quarter, I’d guess.”
“Yes, thank you.”
With a nod, he straightened his cap over his coiled gray hair and loaded Armand’s trunks into the rear. Holding her portmanteau, Vivienne lifted the hem of her petticoats to clear the wheel, and Armand handed her up into the carriage. He climbed in beside her, not quite muffling a moan as he sat.
Sea travel had not agreed with him. Too sick for much conversation, he had asked her to read aloud to pass the time, and she had agreed. Unfortunately, Romeo and Juliet had only deepened his emotional misery, and Robinson Crusoe, adventure tale of a shipwrecked hero, had done nothing to ease his distress.
The horses pulled the carriage up the slope from the wharf to Front Street, their black tails swishing at flies. The land leveled, and the activity swirling about the carriage both bewildered and buoyed Vivienne. Iron-rimmed wheels and hooves rang over cobblestones. Sailors spilled boisterously out of grog shops, and street criers hawked their wares along the teeming riverfront. For three years, she had barely seen a carriage, for those who could afford them had fled Paris as soon as they grasped the danger. Now not only did she sit in one, but the earth fairly shook with the thundering of coaches, chariots, chaises, wagons, and drays. Bridles jangled and whips cracked above the horses pulling them.
“Ask him how big this town is,” Armand prompted, and she complied.
“Well now, this here along the riverfront is the eastern edge, of course.” The driver hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “Behind us a couple blocks is Vine Street, the northern boundary before the Northern Liberties suburbs. Seven blocks down the river from Vine—that’s about a mile, I reckon�
��is Cedar Street, the southern end.”
A mile from one end to the other. The entire length of Philadelphia was shorter than the distance between the Palais-Royal and the Bastille. “And to the west?” Vivienne asked. “How far does it reach?”
“Eighth Street.”
A gust of wind sashayed against her blue silk gown, swaying the lace at her elbows. “So, eight blocks from here? The city is less than a square mile?”
The driver grinned. “And growing all the time. Forty thousand souls and counting.”
Swallowing her surprise, she translated for Armand, who straightened his bicorne hat on his brow. “And they call this a capital.” Lace ruffles bobbed beneath his chin as he muttered.
The carriage trundled over the street, rumbling the bench beneath Vivienne. At the large, brick London Coffee House, they rounded the corner onto a street that must have been a hundred feet wide. In the middle of this broad road, covered market sheds buzzed with noise and people. Her stomach clenched in envy at the sight of shoppers’ baskets laden with golden rolls or rainbowed with fresh produce.
“Markets are open every Wednesday and Saturday,” the driver threw over his shoulder.
Wednesday. Saturday. She rolled the English words over her tongue. No more ten-day weeks without room for the Lord’s Day. No more months named for wind or flowers or snow or heat, no more counting the years from the birth of the revolution, rather than from the birth of Christ. The carriage driver could not have known the comfort his simple comment afforded.
The repetitive calls of rag pickers and chimney sweeps reminded her of Paris, where she could buy roasted chestnuts, wine, or café au lait on nearly any corner.
“Pepper pot! All hot!” an African woman shouted, banging a long-handled spoon on a large pot of soup. “Come buy my pepper pot!”
Smells of oysters and manure mixed freely with those of perfume and tobacco. Among the crowd, round black hats the size of dinner plates topped men in black cloaks and white neckcloths. Men walked, children played, and women swept along bricked surfaces between the buildings and the streets. Sidewalks, the driver explained. In France, pedestrians and horses and wagons all shared the roads.
Armand clucked his tongue, his spine straight as a lamppost in his mauve silk suit, hands clasped atop the walking cane between his knees. “You are a peacock in a dovecote, ma belle.”
She frowned. “Armand, we are clear on our arrangement, yes? If what the captain said is true, there are five thousand French in this city. That’s plenty of company for you without me.” The voyage had blunted the sharp edge of her bitterness toward him, but his presence still scraped at her nerves.
“Come now. Aren’t we at least friends after the last several weeks? And yet you stand ready to evict me from your life though you don’t know another soul here.”
They were not friends, but she left that remark uncorrected. In truth, he had surprised her during the crossing by guarding her from more than one sailor’s advances. Though he was nearly green with nausea, he had summoned his strength and a voice like thunder to protect her. When storms had raged and waves had pounded the schooner, they had huddled belowdecks together. She could not remember who had reached for the other’s hand first, but she did recall clasping his fingers in the dark as salt water streamed in around them.
But the voyage was over at last, and so was their forced companionship.
Persuading patience into her voice, she reminded him, “We have different goals here, you and I. You want to stay only as long as you must before you may return with your head intact. I have no desire to go back at all.” If this was to be her new home, she would not waste time longing for a past that could never be restored.
Lines furrowed Armand’s brow. He pursed his thin lips and looked out toward the street. For a moment, his posture flagged, as though pressed by the weight of all he had lost. His wife and their children had moved in with her sister’s family somewhere in the south of France almost as soon as his title and estate were stripped from him. Armand had not been invited. “And if your family had not abandoned you?” Vivienne had pressed on the schooner. “Would you have written to Sybille?” For that, he’d had no answer.
Two blocks had passed, and they turned onto a narrower street lined with lampposts and passed through a blizzard of small white petals plucked by the wind from their tree branches. Gradually, the homes changed from brick to wood.
“What’s that all about?” Armand pointed to some boarded-up homes whose gardens had been abandoned to weeds.
Vivienne repeated the question in English for the driver.
“The yellow fever,” he replied. “It was worst in the blocks closest to the river. Fevers always come in the hottest months of the year, when the air is bad, but last year . . .” He shook his head. “Worst I ever saw.”
“And these people never recovered,” Vivienne added.
“These, and thousands more.”
“What does he say?” Armand asked, and she translated. “Thousands? Are you sure he said that?”
“Pardon me, how many died, again?” She leaned forward. Perhaps she had misunderstood.
“Five thousand. In three months’ time. Many said the French brought it with them, when they came from Cap-Français.”
Vivienne gasped and quickly repeated this information to Armand. She knew the revolution had crossed the ocean to the West Indies and the French colony of Saint-Domingue. The colony was famous throughout Europe for the wealth gained by its cotton, coffee, sugar, and indigo. But the slaves, who outnumbered their French and Creole masters ten to one, rose up when the cry of liberty reached their ears from far-off France. Those who escaped the massacres there must have come to Philadelphia. If the city laid the blame for the epidemic at their feet, would they bother to make the distinction between French fleeing Saint-Domingue and French escaping France?
The carriage rolled to a stop in front of a building that slouched between a townhouse and a café with a red-striped awning. Above the front door, a wooden shingle reading “Pension Sainte-Marie” squeaked on its hinge in the breeze. A halo was carved above the words. Though Vivienne knew it had been named for the Virgin Mary, it was still a jolting reminder of the late queen, whose name had never been paired with the holy.
“Here? Are you sure?”
She allowed Armand’s question to drift, unanswered, while she climbed out of the carriage and took the measure of the small wooden pension, from its flaking yellow paint to the untidy lavender bushes stretching slender fingers toward the windows. The building’s frame hunched slightly forward, like a woman whose shoulders were rounded with age. Tree boughs bent gracefully over the sidewalk toward the pension, and shadows fell like Chantilly lace at her feet.
Aside from the wasp nest in one blue shutter, Vivienne found the place charming in spite of—or perhaps because of—its gently weathered exterior.
The plodding of passing horses filtered through the birdsong, and she turned to find the carriage driver still awaiting her verdict before he would leave. Armand watched with a scowl, obviously unimpressed.
She climbed the four front steps and rapped the brass knocker on the door. At length, a maid of slight frame and florid cheeks answered. Wiping her hands on her greasy apron, she took one look at Vivienne and said, “French?” She looked to be no more than nineteen years of age.
“Yes,” Vivienne replied. “Have you room?”
The maid blew a strand of brown hair from before her eyes and proceeded to speak in their native language. “We do. Two dollars a week for a room and one meal per day. You’ll not find any cheaper, for the French Welcoming and Charity Society takes up some of the costs. The missus will tell you that—come in, I’ll fetch her. That is, if you still want the room?”
“Yes, I do. A moment, please.” Feeling lighter than she had in some time, she hastened down the steps and told the driver he could carry on. “Thank you.”
The driver touched two fingers to the brim of his hat and smiled.
“Fare thee well, as the Quakers say.”
Armand clutched at her, countenance sagging. “When will I see you again?”
She unwrapped his fingers from her arm. “Forgive me, but that is not my chief concern. Please, do not seek me out. Au revoir.” With one more wave to the carriage driver, she returned to the Pension Sainte-Marie, eager for a new beginning.
By the time she stepped inside the narrow foyer, another woman stood ready to greet her, a soup-spoon-sized hollow at the base of her corded neck. “I am Madame Ernestine Barouche, the proprietress.”
Not citizenness. Madame.
“Vivienne Rivard.” She bobbed in a curtsy.
“You are very welcome here. I understand you’ve met Paulette Dubois, my maid and helper in all things about the pension.” Silver hair sparkled in expertly coifed curls upon Madame Barouche’s head. Her dress, with its wide panniers at her hips and flattened bodice, suggested she had traveled to America nearly twenty years ago, when such were the fashions, and for whatever reason had never returned. “It has been months since we’ve had a new boarder. Do you come direct from France? Or have you been living in exile in England?”
“Madame, it is not three months since I left Paris.”
A brown-spotted hand fluttered to her heart in a gesture that echoed Tante Rose. “Do come in.” She beckoned Vivienne into the parlor and bade her sit in one worn velvet armchair while she lowered herself into the other. “You must tell me, then. We heard some months ago that the queen—” Madame clasped her hands firmly at her waist. “She is dead. Along with the king. Is this so?”
Dust flecked a sunbeam between them. “Yes, it is true,” Vivienne confirmed.
Madame crossed herself. Lines deepened from the corners of her mouth to her chin. “We can never be certain of the news we hear. Some have held on to hope that the queen was still alive, though imprisoned, and that plans were under way to bring her here. To America, I mean.”
Vivienne crossed her ankles, then uncrossed them, the chair squeaking with her movement. “I’m sorry. She is no more.”
A Refuge Assured Page 4