The bonnet rouge.
It can’t be. Not here.
Exhausted and shaken, Vivienne returned to the Pension Sainte-Marie.
“Welcome back, dear.” Madame Barouche halted Vivienne’s steps before she could climb the stairs. “You missed tea, but if you’d like, we can certainly put that to rights.”
Paulette rounded the corner with a stack of folded bed linens, her thin face red and glistening beneath her starched white cap. “Tea service is over, thank you very much, and I’ll not be dirtying the dining room again today.”
“In the kitchen with me, then,” Madame tried. “If you don’t mind the informality.”
Vivienne clutched her satchel tighter to hide the tremor in her hands. “Not at all.”
“Fine, although a visit to your washbasin wouldn’t harm you much, either.” Paulette scurried off.
The color rose in Madame Barouche’s cheeks. “There’s no putting a lid on that girl, and I’ve given up trying. She means well, even if her tongue is hinged in the middle.”
Vivienne managed a smile. “I agree with her on this matter. Allow me to freshen up, and I’ll meet you for that cup of tea in a moment.”
In her room, Vivienne washed her face and hands and re-pinned her curls before exiting through the rear door of the building. English ivy covered the ground in a carpet of glossy green points except for a well-worn path from the pension to the kitchen door. With a quick knock, she entered.
Bunches of herbs hung from exposed ceiling beams, releasing their scents into the room. On the wall to her right, copper pots, ladles, and long-handled spoons dangled from a wooden bar above the brick fireplace. A kettle already hung on a crane over the flames. On the opposite wall, a pine dresser held blue-and-white plates and matching serveware.
While Paulette tied and hung a fresh bundle of lavender with the rest of the herbs, Madame Barouche sat at a worktable and pointed to a Windsor chair opposite her. “Please.”
The pine table was satin smooth beneath Vivienne’s fingertips.
“You’re troubled,” Madame observed.
“I saw some things today I believed—with relief—that I should never see again. The bonnet rouge and the tricolor cockade.” The words snagged in her throat, for the mere mention of them contained enough memory to choke her. “Why would Americans wear these symbols?”
“Ah. That.” Madame folded her paper-skinned hands together. “Pro–French Revolution sentiment is strong in this city. They believe France is following in America’s footsteps, and they are cheering them on by their dress. Did you know that the same man who wrote the pamphlet called Common Sense, which sparked the American Revolution, also penned Rights of Man for the French? Thomas Paine. A professional revolutionary, it would seem.”
“But do they understand here that we barely have any rights at all in France anymore? Anyone can be arrested for the smallest offense, and it’s no longer limited to aristocrats. Half the victims are of the Third Estate, at least.”
Steam wafted from the kettle’s mouth. Paulette swung the crane on which it hung away from the fire and poured the boiling water into a small teapot to steep the tea leaves.
Madame reached across the table and held Vienne’s hand. Her touch was cool and dry. “Do not fret, ma chère. Some Americans may foam at the mouth because Washington declared this country neutral in France’s war, but this city has also proven to be quite hospitable to the French who are here.” She released her hand and leaned back in her chair.
Hospitable was not how Vienne would describe the shopkeepers she’d met. Briefly, she told of her failed errands that day. “The sale from Martine was a good start, but it cannot sustain me long,” she added quietly.
Paulette poured two cups of tea and set them on the table. She then took up the sugar nippers, pinched two pieces from the sugarloaf, and dropped one into each cup. “Well, you’ll not be getting any business from Suzanne, in case you were wondering.” Wiping her hands on her apron, she hustled to the end of the table, floured the surface, and yanked a cloth from the top of a large earthenware bowl. A golden yeasty aroma wafted from the risen dough. “She has nothing—less than nothing, if you consider she’s lost her mind. And I’ve had about enough of her complaining, though in that she’s no different from the rest of the aristocrats who wash up here.” Sleeves rolled to her elbows, she lifted the dough onto the table.
“Shhh, Paulette,” Madame scolded, then sighed from a deep well of untold stories.
“It’s all right,” Vienne said, absently watching Paulette shape the dough. “That is, I understand. I once cared for someone who had lost her senses.” But she was not about to confess the rest.
A breeze lilted through the open window. Vivienne straightened her posture in the Windsor chair, resolving to do what she always had. She would make a way forward, no turning back. Peering over her shoulder at the ghosts of her past would serve no purpose here and now.
Paulette leaned into the heels of her hands as she rolled the dough away from her, then refolded it and began again before dividing it into pieces. “Idle hands always put me in a foul temper. No doubt you’ll feel better when you’ve got a little something to dirty your fingers.” Dipping hers in a small bowl of flour, she powdered the table in front of Vienne’s chair and shoved a large lump of dough at her. “Pinch this much off the loaf and work it between your hands like this”—she demonstrated—“to form a nice round ball. About this size, see. I know you’re used to making lace, but you never know. You might take to making something practical, too.”
In all her life, Vivienne had never made bread. At first, there was no need to, with the bakeries so nearby. And then, there simply hadn’t been the means.
Madame clucked her tongue. “You need not do this, my dear. You’ve paid me in coin. I’ll not demand your services.”
Paulette shrugged. “She looks dour, if you’ll pardon my bluntness. And work is a right good remedy for a host of ailments.” She tore off a chunk of dough and deftly rounded it into a perfect sphere. “There’s oils, and there’s Epsom. There’s cold compresses, broths and gruels, and then there’s good old-fashioned work. I never go without it if I can help it.”
A smile crept across Vienne’s face as she dusted her fingers and palms with flour and then set to forming balls from the dough. “I don’t mind, truly.” She had learned basic kitchen work at the pension in Le Havre, and breadmaking seemed far more interesting.
For a few moments, the women sat together in companionable quiet, the only sounds that of birdsong and hoofbeats and wagon wheels from outside. The dough rounding between Vienne’s palms was smooth and soft, and the sight of the rolls filling the pan Paulette set on the table offered a certain satisfaction. Life remained complex and unreliable, but this was simple and predictable. A comfort.
Madame Barouche rapped her knuckles on the table. “It has just come to me.”
Vivienne tore off another piece of dough. “Yes?”
“The way to sell your lace, and in a hurry. All you need is an introduction to Philadelphia society. Individual fashionable women will benefit you the most. You may have heard the name Alexander Hamilton?”
“I may have.” She swept a bit more flour onto her hands.
“He’s the Secretary of the Treasury for the United States,” Madame explained. “Despite being made an honorary citizen of the new French Republic, he remains staunchly opposed to the bloody turn the revolution took and is particularly concerned with the welfare of French émigrés. You must meet his wife, Eliza.” She wrapped her hands around her teacup, though surely by now it had gone cold. “She has the heart of an angel and such influence over her friends. When Eliza learned that a portrait artist and veteran of the American Revolution was in debtor’s prison, she marched in and commissioned him to paint her right there in the jail. Paid him handsomely for work well done, and got her friends to do the same until he had earned enough money to pay his debts and be free once more.”
Paulette’s
mouth pinched.
Vienne’s fingers stilled on the dough she was shaping. “Society women went to a prison? To sit for hours for a portrait?”
“Exactly,” Madame Barouche said.
“Who would do this?”
“Women intent on making a difference, one person at a time,” Madame replied. “We only need to introduce you.”
Fingers sticky with ragged bits of dough, Paulette propped her fists on her slender hips. “I have it. The very thing. We’ll send Father Gilbert with you, of course, as a chaperone. Are you up for attending a ball, Cinderella?”
Spreading her hands, Vienne glanced at her soiled and rumpled gown, the best she owned at present. “And who is to be my fairy godmother?”
Paulette began rolling another ball of dough. “Oh, come now. Between Martine’s gowns and your lace, I’m sure you can make your own wish come true.”
Chapter Six
If it didn’t affect his cousin Finn, Liam would have left the matter alone. But since it did, he trudged toward the corner of Third and Chestnut Street.
A mere handful of blocks separated the Four Winds Tavern from the Treasury Department, but the two establishments were worlds apart. Liam felt a change in the atmosphere as soon as he neared the financial center of Philadelphia. Men stuffed into suits formed knots on the sidewalks, the urgency in their voices hinting at dire consequences if their advice went unheeded. Such was the manner of a finance man, and there was none so convinced of his own rightness as Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.
Veering into the street to avoid a trio of men steeped in their own conversation, Liam narrowly missed a patch of horse manure wheeled flat by carts and buggies. He stepped back onto the sidewalk and found himself before a brick, two-story private home. Roughly converted for use as the Treasury Department, it proved an underwhelming façade for one of the largest—and most powerful—of the federal government’s departments.
Liam stood for a moment, a rock around which a stream of people flowed. There had been a time when he and Alex were easy together. Friends, even, or so Liam had thought. He’d been among several officers invited to dine with Alex and Washington. They had eaten lentil stew and braised rabbit, with Martha’s famous whiskey cake for dessert. But that had been during the war, when the ideals of independence and democracy had been toasted, and the tyranny of Great Britain denounced in unison. “Give us liberty,” they all had said, and had fought to set a nation free.
Liam entered through the front door and into a flurry of activity that smelled of tobacco and ink, courtesy of the clerks scribbling at humble desks against the walls. Upon giving his name to the stoop-shouldered usher who greeted him, Liam was conducted to Hamilton’s ground floor office.
It was a plain space for a man of his position. Planks and trestles along the walls held financial volumes, ledgers, and papers. On one such makeshift sideboard stood an imitation Chinese vase and a plate holding glasses next to a decanter of water. The desk at which Hamilton sat was a simple pine table covered with a green cloth, and remarkably clear. But then, Hamilton could not abide a cluttered desk any more than he could a cluttered mind.
“Well! William Delaney.” The secretary rose, revealing his short stature. Small black eyes shining in a face that had gone jowly in office, he circled his desk and shook Liam’s hand. Surprising, since their last meeting had not ended well.
“I would say that I hope I’m not intruding, but you never stop working, so . . .”
“Indeed.” Alex returned to his chair. “You cannot imagine how the work piles up. I trust you will sit.”
Liam pulled a heavy oak chair closer to Alex’s desk before taking a seat. He wasn’t accustomed to sitting in the presence of Alexander Hamilton. As long as he’d known him, Alex’s nervous energy had rarely surrendered to a chair but sent him pacing instead. Today, however, the small man with big ideas looked wilted beyond his thirty-nine years.
Liam leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his cap in his hands. “Are you unwell?” he asked. “Ghosts of the fever haunting you today?” Last summer, Alexander and his wife had succumbed to the yellow fever epidemic. Though they both recovered, it had stripped Alex of his typical physical and mental stamina for some months.
“Fever? No. I’m plagued by something far more virulent and pernicious than that, my friend.” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Republicans. But you haven’t come to hear about my political rivals. Make your request, and we shall see how I may assist you.”
Alex had risen to an astonishing level of power since they’d first met. Not only that, but he had a wife and children who adored him. Liam had never pined for a cabinet position, but he had hoped—had expected—to have a family of his own by now, which was more important to him by far. Or at least it had been, when he’d imagined that goal within reach.
“It’s the whiskey tax, Alex. Are you aware of the hardships it imposes?”
The secretary frowned. “Is this about those rebels in the frontier?”
“It wasn’t so long ago that we were the rebels, and Washington besides. Fighting against taxation without representation. You must know that’s how the whiskey rebels view this tax. They feel singled out. Their interests aren’t represented.”
Alex opened his mouth to speak, but Liam barreled on.
“The roads between their land and any markets are pathetic. The most economical way they can get their grain here is to distill it into barrels of whiskey and cart them behind a mule over dangerous mountain paths. The Mississippi River would be an ideal way to transport their goods, but you—that is, the government—have failed to even open negotiations with Spain for permission to navigate its waters.”
“If you haven’t noticed, we’re barely keeping out of a war which we are disastrously ill-prepared to fight—”
Liam held up his hand. “I’m well aware of that, and I appreciate the delicacy the situation requires. But for argument’s sake, allow me to present a perspective contrary to popular opinion. Western Pennsylvania is as much a part of this country—this state—as Philadelphia is. Those men are patriots and veterans, the same as you and me. And you know better than anyone that they were never paid for helping secure America’s independence. Is it any wonder so many traded those bonds in when speculators promised fertile land? Except the land they got in exchange isn’t fertile for anything but barley.”
“The states were flat broke after the war. No militia were paid. You could have been, though, as an officer, if you hadn’t refused.”
Liam’s militiamen had risked and sacrificed as much as he had. Of course he’d wanted to get paid for his service, but to accept money when men like Finn got nothing—it didn’t suit. And Alex knew that. He knew Liam had scrimped and saved as a schoolmaster until he had enough money put together to finally buy his land. “It’s called principle,” he said simply.
“You say it as though I’d not heard of the word.”
“From where the whiskey rebels stand, the liberties they fought for have vanished. Whiskey is used for trade, for bartering. It’s their currency, Alex. When you demand taxes on whiskey as soon as it’s produced, you’re taking coin they do not have.”
Hamilton rose and went to the sideboard along the wall. From the glass decanter, he poured two tumblers of water. “I’m doing everything I can to finance this country. We need taxes to do it. And that rebellion in the West, as you put it so mildly—it smacks of revolution inspired by the French.” Returning to his desk, he handed a glass to Liam before taking a drink. “We cannot afford to allow perfidy to go unpunished. Law and order hang in the balance, Liam. Laws are to be obeyed, even when one does not agree with them. Otherwise we’re left with anarchy. I can almost hear the guillotines slam. Can’t you?”
Liam’s glass perspired in his palm. “This isn’t about the French. This is about America.”
“Indeed, it is. On this we agree.”
“And you.”
Alex cocked his head. “How so?”
“Some say you are a monarchist.”
“Ah, yes.” He nodded. “Many do.”
“They say you would turn America into another England if you could, and put yourself on the throne with crown and scepter.”
Alex finished drinking his water. “I’ve heard it all. I’ve read it all. Obviously, you have, too. The debate between friends of liberty and friends of order is a significant one.”
The usher returned and announced the next petitioner.
Alex looked at his pocket watch. “But unfortunately, not one I have time to explore in detail just now. I do welcome a good spar, however, and seeing as you have some fight left in you, may I suggest you come to the Binghams’ salon this evening?”
Liam set his glass on Alex’s desk. “William and Anne Bingham?” William was a successful merchant of Federalist persuasion and had been a warm supporter of the Constitution. He and his wife were the most fashionable couple in Philadelphia society, renowned for lavish parties at their mansion. The Washingtons and Hamiltons both held public levees and receptions, but Bingham salons were strictly by invitation only. “I’ve never had the pleasure . . .”
“I’ll see that you’re added to the guest list. I rarely have time for these gatherings, but tonight’s will prove to be most stimulating. French refugees will be there, fresh off the boat in the last week or so. We’ll hear the latest news straight from eyewitness sources. Those from the Jeffersonian camp will be there, too. Verbal dueling will abound.” Smiling, he rose, and Liam did the same. “Do say I can count on your presence at the Binghams’. Eliza will be pleased to see you again.”
After promising to come, Liam shook Alex’s hand, then brushed past the next petitioner on his way out.
In the middle of Martine’s chamber, Vivienne turned in a slow circle, the folds in her silk skirt whispering with movement. “How did we do?”
Martine smiled broadly from her perch on the edge of the bed, hands clasped beneath her chin. Henri lay curled beside her atop the counterpane. Blue veins mapped his translucent skin. He blinked, watching with mild interest.
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