by James Tipton
“It has a slavery of the mind,” he said.
But that day the gentlemen had not come to discuss the world’s movement toward freedom. William had convinced the captain that we must all go on an ice-skating expedition.
“They have nothing else to do up in the frozen north,” the captain said.
“I cannot imagine a winter without ice-skating,” William said.
“It’s immoral. And ice-skating is probably the most egalitarian sport there is.”
“There you have it,” said the captain to me. “Are you ready? Our foreign friend has spent all morning getting our boots shod with steel.
But we need a second lady to balance our riding party. I’ve taken the liberty of asking your charming maidservant.”
“Claudette?”
“The same,” the captain said.
“Michel is nothing if not egalitarian,” William said.
We were riding through the forest of Blois west of town, with wet oak and fir scent on the wintry air, and somewhere, far off in the woods, the blows of an axe. We were on our way to a pond near Molineuf. William was going to teach us all to ice-skate now. He said it was simple, and everyone did it where he was from. He carried the newly shod boots in a sack on his horse. The captain carried his sword, and Claudette carried dinner. I took spare stockings and skirts, for I was afraid that Claudette and I would get icily wet. But it wasn’t about our expedition that the men were talking.
“Grégoire—that’s the constitutional bishop of Blois, who served in the National Assembly—says it’s the only direction things can take,” William said.
“But you have a king and a parliament,” I said. “Why can’t we—”
“Madame Williams,” said the captain, “monarchy in France is too used to absolute power. It will never abide the lessening of those powers. English kings have not held such power in hundreds of years—or if they have tried—”
“They were quickly dethroned,” said William, “which is the inexorable end to which we are going.”
“And what about the powers of your Assembly? How many Surveillance Committees does it need?” I said.
“They are protecting the people—,” the captain started.
“I thought that was your job, captain,” I said. “These committees can investigate anyone, anytime, under any pretext, under the broadest definition of possible treasons imaginable—and made up in their minds, mainly. Why, you, captain, could be investigated by them, if you were to say something disagreeable to them. William—well, a foreigner, he’s automatically suspect and cannot speak for himself.”
William laughed, and so did the captain. “I am a member of Les Amis de la Constitution club,” William said. “The captain has introduced me to the most important patriots in the town.”
“He has met the powerful Grégoire,” the captain said.
“All I know,” I said, “is that in the name of freedom from tyranny, we have set up new tyrants who have fewer restraints on them than ever before.”
“The Austrians are threatening,” the captain said.
“One can justify anything,” I said.
“Is that the pond through those trees?” Claudette said.
It was amusing: William taking me by both hands on the ice and my legs going in opposite directions, the suave captain slipping and landing on his rear, Claudette spinning with William, falling and bringing him down. I came to enjoy gliding along, but was very bad at stopping and would make in increasing uncontrolled speed for an overhanging willow branch. Claudette and the brave captain soon surrendered and started on dinner, perched on a dry log and laughing at me.
I liked seeing them there, in their funny skates, one in his great blue cloak, the other in her long brown cape, his shining boots, her wooden clogs resting beside them. Claudette peered out from her hood with laughing eyes. The captain had a tricolor cockade on his hat. He poured wine into a wooden cup and handed it to her. This is how William and the captain envision the Revolution, I thought, the man of aristocratic birth and the woman of peasant origins, sharing a wooden cup of wine. But such a vision only comes from the eyes of the truly good. It doesn’t take into account the hatred and ambitions of men.
William said the true skating experience must be at night, when the moon was reflected in the ice and one could hiss along, barely seeing the shadows of others, and fly through dark space like the stars through the heavens. I said I could fly into the willow tree no longer and joined the others on the log, while we all watched William perform curves with a grace and skill and speed that made him look, alone on a winter pond in the paling light, like some spirit from another world.
After cold roast chicken, bread, and wine, William further surprised us by taking a wooden flute from his pocket and sending haunting sounds through the forest. “I’m not very good,” he explained; “we had a minstrel in our group at school, and we ’d row him to a small island in a lake, and he would play from there and we ’d hear it echo over the water.”
William wants to help the world, I thought, but he’s not a warrior, like the captain. He’s not a politician, like their Grégoire. He’s a poet who belongs in wild nature. He sits there like Pan himself, blowing on his flute and the forest listening.
“What brought you to France?” I suddenly said.
William put the flute down. The captain poured himself more wine. No one knew what William was doing here, except, now, staying in Blois to visit me, we three presumed.
“The Surveillance Committee could say you’re a spy for England.”
The captain laughed. “They say England, not Austria, is behind all the counter-revolutionary movements. You’d better answer the lady.”
“I am running away,” said William. “Not from unjust governments or the law, just running away.”
“From what?” I said.
“From nothing,” he said. “Literally, nothing. I was doing nothing.
There was nothing I wanted to do. My uncles wanted me to go into the church, my older brother to follow him into the law. I told them I was coming here to study the language, which was partly true. I told friends in London I wanted to observe a new republic being born, which was partially true. I had no home. I had restless legs. I have no parents. I am a dependent who must beg his uncles for money. So I am running away from the nothing that was my life in England.”
“What have you found?” I said.
“Everything,” he said. “Simply everything.”
And he lifted his wooden flute, no larger than his hand, to his mouth, and a melody of some far-off realm, a border realm where starlight reflected on frozen lakes, filled the falling dusk.
Later, by myself, as the moon appeared above the treetops, I skated alone near the far end of the pond where a grove of bare chestnuts grew up to the bank. The forest seemed smaller with no leaves on the trees, as if one could see through it to the other side. I felt suddenly lonely then, by myself in the winter evening at the end of the pond. I felt as if William had already taken that inevitable ship back to England. What have I been thinking? I thought. In what an illusion have I been living? I skated back across the pond as fast as I could without falling. I thought every minute was precious now. I saw William cooking something over a little fire and headed straight for him.
I took my eyes off him to look at my skates, to slow myself down, and when I looked up, he was gone.
Then I heard a whisper of skates behind me, felt his warm breath and a kiss on the back of my neck, felt his hand place something in my pocket and then saw his back, the tails of his frock coat flapping, as he skated smoothly away. I reached my hand in my pocket and pulled out hot chestnuts. I watched William sail over the ice, bearing in his gloved hands his gifts to the captain and Claudette.
The next time we were alone in the quiet dark of chez Vincent, with the shadows mingling on the ceiling, I asked him about his father and how he died. I had lost mine at age twenty, William at thirteen—his mother when he was eight. “I remember,�
�� he said, “hiding behind a low stone wall, away from a bitter wind. All I wanted to do was go home from Hawkshead School for Christmas. The horses that my brothers and I had sent for seemed to take forever to arrive. Meanwhile, my father’s business duties had called him away from home, and he got lost in the mist on his journey back and spent a freezing night out of doors. He was burning up with fever by the time we got home and died before the new year. That is one reason, Annette, I was concerned about you and your night in the snow. I felt responsible, somehow. I felt that he got lost from hurrying through a stormy night to get home in time to greet us, returning from Hawkshead.”
“I felt responsible too,” I said. “I could have saved my father. I knew I could. I don’t know how, but I would have. I still feel that.”
“Sometimes it’s not responsibility at all. Sometimes it’s just the way of the world.”
William kissed me on the cheek lazily, and I put my head on his chest. “You smell like an oak forest after the rain,” I said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“No one,” he said.
“The snow’s melting,” I said. “It’s times like these you can hear the river, even from all the way up here.”
“Impossible,” he said. “The Loire is a quiet river.”
It seemed very important to me, then, that we hear the river, that it not be impossible. I got out of bed, opened the curtains, the window, and threw the shutters back. The cold surged in. “What are you doing?” William asked.
“You’ll see. You’ll hear, I mean,” I said.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“Hush, and listen,” I said.
Clouds hurried toward the face of a large moon, illuminating the slate roofs of my town. Far off I could see the tower by Saint-Louis Cathedral and the bridge and the river. Then they slipped away when the clouds came. The sweet, rain-washed air rushed into the room, closed all winter.
“I don’t hear anything,” my husband said.
“Listen. You must listen hard.” He sat up, leaning on his elbow. He was listening.
A deep, constant, low sound filled the night. It was the river flowing high against its banks.
“Once you hear it, it’s unmistakable,” he said.
“Then it’s not impossible,” I said. I started to close the shutters.
“No, leave them open,” said William. “I like it like that.”
And I got back into bed and warmed myself against him. There would be other, larger things that I could never prove to him were true just by opening a window. But I had no need to prove them now.
I think we both thought, in that night in the late winter with the distant, unmistakable sound of the river coursing through the town, that our love was as permanent as the flow of all that water, season after season, through the land.
The cold, sweet air felt good. We left the window open the rest of the night.
Overbless’d
During a pause in my conversation with Marguerite, I dipped bread in a bowl of hot chocolate, pondered again how long William could stay in France, with his meager means and with the suspicions of foreigners increasing, and at the same time noticed, outside in my sister’s garden, the first daffodils of spring along the walkway. Once I saw them, I wondered why I hadn’t also seen the quince just starting, and even a few blossoms on the plum and pear trees, their white petals against the branches still dark from the rain. Suddenly the boughs were lined with hundreds of tight, folded buds, ready to explode.
“Paul tells me the assembly has decreed that all émigrés are conspirators now, and their property is to be confiscated,” Marguerite said. “Can you believe—the Varaches as conspirators? Little Sylvie, Marie’s friend?”
“They think everyone is a conspirator,” I said. “They even accuse each other.”
“Is Monsieur William safe from being accused?”
“He’s shut himself in his room lately, working on an essay, in French, mind you, in praise of the new constitution, which he will send to his acquaintance in the assembly, the mighty Brissot. It’s called ‘The French Constitution and the Dawn of a New Era: An Englishman’s Perspective.’”
“Does he know...of what we were just talking?”
I shrugged and exhaled air and looked at the early efforts of the tree. Soon it would be its own white cloud.
“Will he want you to go to England?” my sister asked.
I shrugged again. I couldn’t remember which bore fruit first, the plum or the pear tree. That the trees would be laden with fruit was the only thing that one could really be certain of, I thought.
“I am so sick of hearing of demands for war,” Marguerite went on, “how all the émigrés gathering with the King’s brothers in Germany mean to attack us and bring with them the armies of Prussia and Austria, so we should attack them first. Well, Grandmère Vallon said there never is a good time to bring a child into the world. They just come when they want to. And it’s a good thing they do.”
I smiled at her and patted her hand. “Yes, it’s a good thing,” I said.
“When Maman and Monsieur Vergez were here for dinner the other night, they looked happy together,” she said. “It will be a bit complicated with Maman, won’t it? I think you would be happier, staying here.”
By that afternoon William had finished his essay and sent it to be read by La Patriote Française. We met when I was still on the last step on the Vincent stairway and he was standing in the hall below me. Without saying anything, we embraced there, and he said, someday we must have a house with a stairway, so I could always stand a step above him and we could embrace and be at the same height. I said, All right.
He said, And a river running behind it too, and took from the inside pocket of his frock coat a long, slender box and handed it to me.
I knew what kind of box it was, and upon opening it, saw a delicate pink fan. I spread it out and beheld a line of people painted on it, with a wagon in their midst, drawing something. “It’s the latest style of decoration for fans,” said William. “It’s the funeral procession of Voltaire. A great writer, and a great hero of the people.”
“It’s lovely,” I said. Gone were the days when butterflies and flowers decorated a lady’s fan. I was simply touched that William, with his little money, had bought me a present. I waved it and looked coquettishly over the top of it at him.
We were out on the terrace now, with the little fountain lapping.
Gérard and Marie came out to greet Monsieur William, and he squatted to say hello to Gérard, then took Marie’s hand, and we walked toward the blossoming trees. I showed Marie my fan.
“What are these people doing on the fan?” she said. “Where are the flowers?”
“This is the new style,” I said. “It’s the parade in Paris to honor Voltaire after he died,” I said. “We ’ll read his Candide when you’re a little older. He satirized the hypocrisy of governments and the absurdity of war. It’s a historical fan.”
“I prefer the flowers,” she said. Gérard was skipping before us.
Marie ran ahead to join her brother. They were enjoying a wind that came up from the river valley. Marie held her arms out straight from her sides, and Gérard, looking at her, copied her. It was the first spring wind and felt noticeably different. This one carried with it, barely discernible, a scent of the new earth.
But it was still cool, and I shivered. “William,” I said. “William, I have something to say to you.”
He stopped. I looked over at the buds on the lean branches. “I am with child,” I said. The enormity of that hit William stronger than any spring wind. He almost rocked in front of me.
He still asked the obvious question. “Are you sure?” he asked.
I nodded.
He opened his arms to me. I felt his arms around me and nudged my face into his shoulder. I felt him kiss the top of my head. “I’m so afraid and I love you so much,” I said.
He pulled me closer. I could hear his heart. He didn’t say anythin
g.
I could hear the children shouting something to each other. William was thinking. I knew he was thinking, with the spring wind ruffling his hair.
“It’s a bad time,” I said. “I know I would like a church wedding.
Maman would want it, but the new priests are not real priests and—our ceremony by the river will do, for now. Marguerite says there are more frightening things happening every day. Grandmère Vallon says there never is a good time—”
He held me out from him, so he could see me. “I think,” he said, “that I must return to England immediately. I will solicit my uncles for money. I will publish my long poem. I will secure a position as tutor, save enough to return, and—”
“William, I don’t want you to leave. If you leave, too many forces could keep you from returning for a long time. Stay with me until the baby is born. Stay with me. Then go to England, if you must. You know I have a bequest from my father which I can draw on—”
He raised his hands in protest.
“My sister will let me stay here. I’ve already talked with her.”
“I will stay with you if it is your wish,” he said. “When is—”
“December. Sometime in December.” I raised my fan and noticed the mob of little figures and the bier of Voltaire, then the spring sun pouring in through the pink color, as through the backs of petals.
“I’m glad you will stay,” I said.
“I had another present for you,” he said, “but it seems small now, compared with what you have just told me. Here—” and he drew a folded paper from his waistcoat pocket. “I wrote some more about the story of the lovers.”
I nodded. For some reason, I thought I would cry if he read me that poem.
“This follows,” he said, “the opening of that door, if you remember, that let paradise in upon him.” He paused. “Maybe you would like to read it.”
It was better for me right now, reading it aloud, than hearing his voice say the words. How did he know that? I read,
...pathways, walks,
Swarm’d with enchantment till his spirit sank