Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution

by James Tipton

  “The Jacobins hate him now—”

  “Brissot is still powerful. The madmen are in the minority. You’ll see. I’ll return,” William said. “I’ll get a sealed and signed letter from the National Assembly that a thousand Committees of Surveillance couldn’t contest.” He shouldered his rucksack. “I like walking in the autumn night,” he said.

  William was ready to walk, but Paul suggested that he would be safer if he were driven inconspicuously in a wagon up to Vendôme; then William could go on from there, avoiding the more obvious route from Blois to Paris, through Orléans.

  “I walk fast,” William said.

  “A wagon at night can make better time,” Paul replied. “We ’ll load it with vine clippings, as if we ’re bringing some vines to be planted near Vendôme tomorrow. It’s near vendange, the harvest time. Nothing will look amiss with vines in a wagon in September. Save your legs, Monsieur William. Drink a last brandy; I’ll explain it to Jean.

  He’s always saying life was too dull here.”

  And William, who had appreciated so much of the Vincent hospitality over the months, did not gainsay his host of the summer, the good man who risked his own standing to warn him of his danger.

  I told William I had to retire to my chamber for a moment and left him talking with Marguerite in the drawing room. I used this time to change into my riding boots, put on a woolen cape, and tell Claudette to let Monsieur William know I would say good-bye to him down at the stables. I found Jean harnessing Paul’s gelding to the wagon.

  “La Rouge loves to pull a cart,” I said to him. “She’s been doing it since she was two. She ’ll yield to a wagon. Let me harness La Rouge.”

  As I did so, and quietly apologized to La Rouge for this indignity, I saw William come down from the house. I could tell by his gait he was reluctant. He didn’t like running away. He didn’t like giving in to the Committee of Surveillance. If it weren’t for me, for the child, he would have stayed for certain—and yet, I told myself, if it weren’t for me and my past friendship with Monsieur Leforges, William would not be in trouble. But that way of thinking also became ridiculous. If it weren’t for me, William would not be in Blois.

  “Monsieur William,” I said, more formal because of Jean, “I do not believe in good-byes. And, as you said, this is not a farewell. I just want to ride to the edge of the vineyard with you. Please help me up, Jean. I can drive.” And Jean helped me onto the seat. I saw Paul had hastily cut some vines and tossed them in the wagon. I also saw a small basket on the seat. “What’s this?” I asked Jean.

  “Cook gave it to me. She said Madame Vincent had told her to put some bread and cheese and water in a basket. Cook said she added cold chicken and a flask of wine.”

  William hopped up, and before Jean could get on also, I said “Allons-y” to La Rouge, and we drove out of the stables. I looked back at Jean and waved. “Tell my sister I’ll be back by tomorrow,” I called.

  William stared at me. That September night was clear over the vineyard. “I’m your guide to Vendôme, Monsieur,” I said. “I will get you there by daybreak and be home myself by noon. You need someone to recite poetry to you on the voyage, for I have memorized yours, in French. You need someone with whom to discuss names of children, for we haven’t decided that, and what if you are stuck in Paris, waiting for your papers? A baby needs a name when it enters the world. And you need someone who cares for you to make sure you get at least to Vendôme and no sans-culotte or Committee of Surveillance patriot gets to you first. Not that they would send riders out in the night after a lone English royalist Girondin counter-revolutionary spy.”

  “You’re a marvel,” he said, “a crazy, reckless, lunatic marvel. But now I fear for you. Alone, I only have myself to worry about, and I can take care of myself. If you were caught aiding me—”

  “No one will be after you until the morning, and by then you’ll be past Vendôme, well on your way to Chartres—without me.”

  We were through the north edge of the vineyard now, and turning onto the quai Villebois, then across the bridge, through town and north to Vendôme. William took the reins from me. “I’ve told you before, there is no one like you in England, and probably no one like you in France.”

  “I hope not,” I said. “I don’t want you finding two of me.”

  “Actually, there are many of you. All within yourself. You contradict yourself. For instance, your sister and brother-in-law, whom you love, you have just now distressed. The woman who is so concerned for her child has just subjected herself to a wagon ride at night with a Committee of Surveillance behind her.”

  “And to those people, one must add another,” I said, “the woman who is in love with a foreign spy and must get him safely out of the country.”

  “You have lost all reason,” he said. “But I love you for it.”

  “Let me give you the latest line I memorized,” I said. “It will be short, for I will try to give it to you in your own language,

  Faint wail of eagle melting into blue / Beneath the cliffs

  “I’m sorry; it must sound dreadful. It’s hard to get my mouth around all those l’s.”

  “I like it,” he said.

  “That’s like us,” I said. “We ’re the eagle melting into the blue of the night, melting out of sight.”

  “Eagles mate for life,” he said.

  “Our nest is in the clouds,” I said. “Out of sight.”

  “I like walking by myself, Annette,” he said. “I like walking on autumn nights. I wouldn’t mind out-walking any Committee of Surveillance. But I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you came.”

  After midnight William offered me some bread and cheese.

  “That’s yours for the trip,” I said. “You’ll need to keep your strength if you’re walking to Paris. You don’t know what you will meet on your way. But I’ll have some water.”

  William drove on, and I glanced up at the night sky and drew again from my recent hoard of his words, words to be hoarded all my life. I spoke, this time in French,

  Where daylight lingers on perpetual snow;

  Glitter the stars above, and all is black below.

  “It is rather black below,” said William. “All the precious ideals of the Revolution turning into tyranny. The stars,” he said. “The stars come from another realm.”

  The night was clear, and the stars stretched out along the road to Vendôme. A waxing moon was three-quarters full, and the road lay white, the woods huddled in darkness, and the fields and passing apple orchards an overlapping of black and white. You felt that you could see for a hundred miles on such a night, and such a feeling also made me nervous. I listened for hooves behind us, for some pursuing member of a Committee of Surveillance, but only heard the wind through poplars along the side of the road.

  Then I heard something stirring, in and out of the trees. “Something, there,” I whispered. La Rouge snorted, and William hastened her along.

  Then a horse stepped out from the trees and looked at us—simply stood beside us as we passed and regarded us. La Rouge whinnied softly. The horse answered.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “It must have got away from somewhere,” I said. “Stop. I need to stretch my legs anyway. Look.” We had stopped in the middle of the deserted road, and William helped me down from the wagon. I walked toward the horse. It was grazing on the dewy grass beside the road. It looked up at me, then bent its head and went on eating. “Perhaps it was requisitioned for the cavalry and it escaped,” I said. “Perhaps it belonged to someone, and it’s trying to get back.” I stroked its mane, combed it with my fingers and untangled some knots. “It’s a lovely gray mare,” I said. Now William rubbed between her eyes.

  “I wish I could take her home,” I said. “Just tie her to the back of the wagon, or give her to you for your journey. Someone’s bound to catch her here.”

  “She might make it home,” William said. “Better leave her that opportunity.”

  And we left her there, gra
zing beside the road in the moonlight. I looked back as we started again, and she suddenly snorted and took off. I heard hooves on the other side of the trees.

  “William,” I said. “She’s following us.”

  The gray now grew bolder and trotted just a few yards off.

  “She likes La Rouge,” William said, “and she’s escaping too. At least we ’re not alone.”

  I looked to my right and caught the eye of the mare, who then tossed her head and trotted before us, as if she were leading. Rouge quickened her pace.

  “She feels secure just being with us,” I said. “I’d like to be like her, William. I could be like her, keeping alongside you, all the way to Paris. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us, any more than that horse knows what will happen to her. I want to go with you to Paris, get your name cleared, then back home, or to England if you must—”

  I grew silent and listened to the sound of hooves on leaves and watched the silhouette of the horse moving now in front of the white and black orchards.

  “Of course I’d like you to come,” William said. “I ache for you to come with me. But now’s not the time, not with Committees of Surveillance and the uncertainty. Any possible danger I want you to avoid. And when you accompany me to England, I want everything to be as comfortable for you as it could be. And the baby—”

  “The baby,” I said. “We haven’t decided on a name. I know you’re right. We ’ve talked it through before. It’s just—for a moment I thought it could be different.”

  And I lay my head in his lap, tucked my legs up, and pulled my cape over them. William sang softly one of his border songs, a mournful, haunting melody with words unknown to me. And with that, and with the gentle jostling of the wagon, I slipped into sleep and the horse merged with my dreams. I heard her now as in a forest, trotting through thick autumn leaves, snapping twigs underfoot. Through it all I heard William’s voice softly singing, and I waited in the pause between hoofbeats for the horses to land, for the hoofbeats to continue. And they did, with the creaking of the wagon, all through the night.

  I woke up, startled by the noise of a cart passing, going in the other direction. Lying on my side, I saw deep pink streaks in the east.

  I sat up. “Where is she?” I said. “Where is the horse?”

  “Sometime just before dawn I didn’t hear her anymore,” William said. “She just wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe she was just a dream,” I said. “Maybe she was some strange dream we both shared.”

  “Then it was a good dream,” William said, “one we can have in memory, together.”

  “Any sign of a rider from Blois?” I said.

  “Not a sign,” William said. “I suspect he wouldn’t leave till daylight. No one’s been up this road. No one in Vendôme knows that I am a spy.” He smiled, then looked ahead and nodded. “The towers of Vendôme?”

  “The tallest is the bell tower,” I said, “of the old abbey. People made pilgrimages to Vendôme for centuries, up until a few years ago.”

  “What’s there?” he said.

  “A tear,” I said, “a single tear, wept by Christ on the tomb of Lazarus, a tear said to have healing properties. A knight of Vendôme brought it back in a vial, all the way from the Crusades—”

  “It didn’t dry up?”

  “How could it? It had already lasted a thousand years. William, you, of all people, must leave room for the mysterious, for that which reason or science finds unaccountable.”

  “Forgive my skepticism. It was merely curiosity.”

  “In any case, pilgrims came to see the Holy Tear. My own father, a practical doctor, went there with me when he had eye trouble, and after that he never had to wear a monocle.”

  “We should visit it. We could use it.”

  “The local Committee of Surveillance, I heard, stopped all pilgrimages—considered them counter-revolutionary. We must only worship Reason now.”

  “Reason alone misses many things,” William said. “Now look at that humble and beautiful cottage. We could live in such a cottage,” he said.

  It was just ahead, to the right of the road. Wisteria wound its way up the chimney and along the side of the cottage. A little fence encircled it, and, as we spoke, puffs of smoke started forth from the chimney.

  “Yes, we could have such a cottage,” I said. “We ’d have to pick lots of apples.” Behind the cottage an orchard stretched, and, even from here, you could see the boughs, heavy with apples, bending toward the ground.

  “I’d have a writing room upstairs, also,” William said. “And you could keep La Rouge in that barn.”

  A big barn was below us now, and a broad chestnut tree, on a little rise, stood between the barn and us.

  “Let’s stop here,” I said, “give La Rouge a rest.”

  William stopped the wagon beneath the low chestnut branches, as under a green and yellow tent, and helped me down. I took Rouge’s harness off, leaving on the halter and lead rope, and let her graze free on the grass beside the road. William opened the basket and passed me the loaf of bread and the jug of water. He took a drink from the wine flask.

  “I’ve seen cottages like that on the edge of Blois,” I said. “With my bequest from my father I could find one and buy it. It couldn’t be very expensive. I’ll write you when you go to England and tell you to meet me in our cottage. We ’ll have roses as well as wisteria. And a Monsieur William pear.” I laughed. “We ’ll bottle our own eau-de-vie.”

  A small thunder of hooves smothered my words, and six National Guardsmen rode from the direction of Vendôme, dusting the bending boughs of the apple trees. One dismounted and pounded on the door of the cottage. A man in shirtsleeves appeared: he towered over the soldier who had pounded on his door. I heard a raised voice from the soldier, and the tall man shrugged, a big shrug with both arms spread out wide to either side. The soldier strode to the barn down the slight hill and beat on its broad doors. They didn’t open. Even though I was sure word could not have reached Vendôme yet of William’s flight, I was afraid, and I’m sure William was too, for he silently took my hand—or I took his. We stood still, hardly breathing, beneath the overhanging chestnut leaves, in earshot but, I hoped, hidden from obvious view by the branches.

  The soldier now ordered his men to dismount. They hit the butts of their muskets against the planks of the door, which must have been shut with a crossbar; one even shot his musket at it, and the report echoed through the quiet valley. Finally, the door splintered and gave way. In a few minutes they dragged out a woebegone priest, in dirty robes, as if he had been in hiding for some time.

  As soon as they stood him before the officer, one soldier hit the priest in the stomach with the butt of his musket. Then another did the same.

  Their officer looked on. They had free license to beat a priest. One took his musket to the priest’s head, as if it were the barn door. Then another followed him, too. Now the priest was down. You could not see him, only the soldiers’ backs and their muskets going up and down. Now and then we heard a moan or a cry that was silenced by the next falling musket. We saw spurts of dust where his legs kicked.

  “They’ll kill him,” I said.

  “This is intolerable,” William said.

  We saw the muskets go up and down again, not in unison, but like some weird water wheel.

  What few people understand about William now, as a famous poet, is that he is—or at least was—a rash and passionate man. And he acted spontaneously because he always trusted his feelings. He looked at me under those leaves, each muffled cry of the priest louder in our ears than the one before, each rising and falling of a musket more impossible to watch, and each dull thud wrenching our own insides. It was one of those split-second looks that determine lifetimes. I nodded—I don’t know now why I nodded. I think I was a fool for nodding. But I think I felt the same as William, that it was inhuman to stand so close to this suffering man and do nothing, just watch.

  So with
no words passed between us, both thinking that the National Guard could not have heard about William yet, he emerged from under the branches of the chestnut tree and shouted for them to cease. With gaping mouths they held the bloody butts of their muskets still; the priest curled himself around his injuries and lay still in the dust below. All were silent. The officer stared at William.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “Monsieur Guillaume,” my husband said. He, too, was much taller than the officer. “I am a member of the patriot club of Blois, the Friends of the Constitution.”

  “Are you?” the officer said. “And on what authority do you give my men an order?”

  “On no authority, Citizen”—William looked at the man’s insignia—“Citizen Lieutenant. I ask it in the name of humanity, in the name of fraternité, of brotherhood.” The lieutenant then snatched a musket from the soldier on his right and shoved its butt, with great strength, into my beloved’s chest. William couldn’t breathe. He doubled over, and I ran out from under the branches also. I fear I screamed. The lieutenant ignored me.

  “No one,” he said, “tells my men what to do or not to do but myself.” He raised the musket again, and I moved in front of William.

  “You’ve beaten two unarmed men this morning, Lieutenant. Will you start now on a patriot’s wife?” I wondered if he noticed my state, partially hidden as it was by the cape.

  The lieutenant lowered the musket and handed it back to his soldier. “Madame, I commend you for your bravery. But I’m afraid I will have to arrest your husband.”

  “On what charge?” I said.

  “For interfering with my arrest. I have orders to bring in that priest.” He said the word with disgust. “Perhaps you and your husband are royalist friends of refractory priests. I notice your husband has an accent. Is he Austrian? That would be quite a find, to bring in a priest and an Austrian spy.”