Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution

by James Tipton

  “It is probably nothing, then, as I thought,” I said.

  He straightened up. It must be seven by now. “Then you will be all right. Let me help you back into the carriage.” He looked at the basket. “You are going to market? So early?” The clock tower was striking seven.

  “The best vegetables are to be had early.”

  “That is true. But a lady like you does the buying for the house?”

  “We are all citizens now.”

  “That is true.” He stood there looking at me with his eager face.

  Just then the other guard appeared around the corner. “Arnaut!

  You imbecile! You leave your post, and you will lose your head.”

  “My friend, he always exaggerates,” Arnaut said.

  “You have been very kind.”

  I allowed him to help me back into the carriage, then he ran down the road and turned into the court. Jean helped me step out again. In the basket, underneath a baby’s pink knit hat and my ivory needles, a white cloth covered the rope. I took the rope out and quickly threw it over the wall, but my arm was not strong enough, and it fell in coils at my feet. I threw it again, and it glanced off the top of the wall. I did not think this was going to be so difficult. I had to ask Jean. Jean looked down and thought about it.

  “Please, Jean, we don’t have time to think.”

  In my anger, I heaved the rope over the top. Then I grabbed my end and gave it to Jean. He stood there with it in his hands.

  “Tie it to the luggage railing. As we practiced.” When I had asked Jean to help and told him it would be dangerous, he had been eager for the adventure. He had always been dependable. Now he seemed frozen with fear. “Do it!” I said, as loudly as I dared.

  Suddenly he woke out of his trance and tied the rope quickly to

  the railing above my head. I saw the rope suddenly grow taut, heard shoes scrabbling against the stones on the other side, then the rope went slack again, and a weight dropped to the ground. I looked up the street, and there was a flower woman, on the other side, carrying two baskets of violets and roses and broad lilies toward Louis XII Square.

  A voice shouted roughly, “Hurry up. Your time is up in there.”

  Then I saw the rope tighten. It stayed taut, the shoes clicked again against the wall, I heard some labored breathing, then I saw the top of Paul’s head above the wall. I looked at the flower woman, who had passed the carriage, and she was looking straight ahead. Paul’s shoulders appeared, then, with a mammoth effort, he pulled himself up and over the wall and slid down the rope. He held out his shaking hands; the rope had skinned his palms.

  “Untie it!” I hissed at Jean, for the railing was out of my reach.

  Jean did so, and we left the rope dangling there. Paul gave me his raw hand to help me into the carriage.

  He looked at me briefly: it was a look I was later to become familiar with in others, one of resoluteness, in spite of fear. Even with his bruises, his face seemed as white as could be. But his eyes were steady, and he managed a slight smile. It was a smile of a minor victory, of the success of a first assault. He said softly, Thank you, and I handed him a spare set of Jean’s clothes, including worn boots and hat, and turned to the window.

  I could see Louis XII Square just ahead, and as we got closer, I saw the sun catching the ornate fountain on the far side. The square was already filling up now with carts and even a few carriages entering it, shop people setting up their wares and others intent on doing the early, best marketing.

  Paul handed me his clothes and shrugged. Though he and Jean were about the same height, Paul was much more slender and swam in the breeches and shirt. I smiled and curled Paul’s old clothes into a ball and dropped them out the window and under the wheels of a cart behind us. I glanced at my watch; we were doing well. I tapped on the ceiling, and Jean pulled to the side of the road and stopped. I told Paul he was obliged to drive now, and he nodded, got out quickly and climbed up to the driver’s seat as Jean jumped off and mixed immediately with the others going into market. He ’d walk home unnoticed up the hill to chez Vergez. Paul snapped the reins over the back of the horses, and we rode on.

  We were about to enter the square, and I could see from here a gleaming mound of red tomatoes, greens of cabbage and lettuce and courgettes piled high, plump yellow squash, pears and apples, and the shining silver of fresh fish laid out in rows. Bright silk and cloth ribbons for sale swung in the breeze, and the smell of fresh bread reached me. The man selling used coats and gowns of those who had emigrated or been imprisoned called out the glories of their silk and lace and velvet and their cheap prices. If we could just enter all that teeming life, I thought, and I could even buy some bread for the trip to make our presence credible, then we could be out the other side by the fountain, across the bridge, and on our way.

  Just then four horsemen in the blue-and-white uniform of the National Guard, swords rattling at their sides and hooves pounding between crowded carts, tore into the Wednesday-morning life of the square. Soon came the tramp of about twenty soldiers marching up from the abbey. They cut a swath through the marketers, some setting up position at the end of the square, near the fountain, and others poking carts and investigating wagons already in the square. Even disguised as my driver, I didn’t want Paul scrutinized; perhaps one of the prison guards who knew him was among those troops.

  I shouted up to Paul, “Jean, take us around by Saint-Nicolas. Now.

  I want to pray.” And Paul turned on rue Saint-Lubin, and we headed back toward the church, on the other side of the abbey.

  We passed outside the long nave of the ancient church, and I breathed deeply and thought that, somehow, I had got along without breathing much since I had first tried to throw the rope over the wall. About six National Guardsmen stood at the intersection of our road and the entrance into the courtyard in front of the church. An officer looked at Paul, with Jean’s hat pulled down over his eyes, and motioned for him to stop. The officer came up to my window. “What is your business?”

  “I am on my way to the church.”

  “On what business?” he repeated.

  “To pray.”

  He grunted and said, “I need to look inside.”

  I opened the door for the officer, and he looked in at the small, empty interior. He patted both seats and even knocked on the wood beneath them. Then his eyes fell on the basket. “Open it.”

  I lifted it to him, and he drew away the white cloth. “A cap I am knitting for my unborn child. I am going to pray for the child now. I have not been well.” The officer glanced down at my protruding belly and motioned for us to pass.

  “On to the church, Jean,” I said, for I was not sure if Paul had heard the conversation. Then, before we could leave, the officer stopped us again.

  His face was at my window. He looked tired and bored, idly curious. “Your coachman, he has a bruised face.”

  “So would you if you had a wife like mine,” said Paul, in a coarse voice. The officer stepped back and gazed at him.

  “She is a cat. She could smell another woman on me and took a candlestick to me.”

  “Why don’t you join the army?” said the officer. “Go and fight the Austrians.”

  He motioned us on again, and we drove into the court before the church and stopped. Paul came around to help me out.

  “I want you to come in with me,” I said.

  He went before me and opened the great four-hundred-year-old door, then followed me in. It was cool and dim, and I noticed for the first time that my mouth was very dry. I felt as if I was suffocating. I tried to swallow, but could not. I turned back and walked down the long south aisle of the nave to the font of holy water near the entrance, dipped my palm in, and lifted it to my mouth. No one saw this blasphemy except Paul, and I repeated it twice.

  A few bent heads turned my way, then bowed once more. I chose one of the many radiating chapels of the chevet, and entered its small enclosed silence. I knelt on the cold stone, and Pa
ul knelt behind me.

  I did not know what we were going to do here, nor how long we would stay. We could not leave the carriage unattended for too long.

  But I wanted to wait until the search had subsided somewhat, and the market in Louis XII Square was thronged. I extended my arm behind me, and Paul took my hand and squeezed it for a moment, then let go.

  When I drew my hand back, I noticed there was blood on it.

  I could not pray. I felt like a statue with a racing mind. The sunlight was bright in the little chapel, and I felt suddenly like the chapel was a prison, and we would never leave it. I bowed my head and thanked Lucette for our safety thus far.

  Boots rang out on the stone floor far behind us, coming quickly down the nave. They were not reverent boots. I felt Paul stiffen behind me. For something to do, I opened my watch and looked at the time. It was twenty-five minutes past seven. Incredible. I felt two and a half hours must have passed. The steps were now in the transept. They paused. Two soldiers, perhaps three, but they sounded like more in the echoing vault of the church. The boots entered the chancel. They were definitely looking for something. I heard them come toward the apse and pause. The owner of one of the pairs of boots said, “We should check the chapels.” His voice snapped out in the stillness their boots had already fragmented.

  I cast my eyes wildly about. The chapel offered a place of concealment, but not the altar, which seemed too obvious. I could not see Paul’s eye, under the wreck of Jean’s hat, but his face looked badly marked. I bowed my head again, and he did the same.

  Then the older voice said, “He is probably far away from Blois by now, on his way to join counter-revolutionaries in the Vendée. We are always too late. And it is not our fault. We were minding our posts. It is the fault of guards inside. You check the rest of these chapels. I will look in the transept chapels, and then we will go.”

  The boots paused before each of the radiating chapels, and the voice called out, “Nothing...Nothing...Nothing...,” until it came to ours.

  “Excuse me, Madame, for interrupting your prayer.” I looked up from my hands, which were knotted, rather than folded, in prayer; it was Arnaut, the young guard from outside the prison.

  His eyes flicked toward Paul.

  “But you were going the other way, to the market, to buy your vegetables early. Who is this man?” he added. He seemed on the verge of calling the other guard, which I knew would be fatal.

  “He is my coachman. I wanted to pray here first. This is a place of significance, Monsieur. I feel reassured here. And lately, I am needing much reassurance. It is a dangerous time to bring a child into the world.”

  “Dangerous indeed, Madame. Your coachman, he accompanies you to the chapel?”

  “We consider him part of the family. We are all citizens, now, as I have said.”

  “A prisoner has escaped. He went over the wall near where your carriage had stopped. And now your carriage sits in the square, empty.”

  “Surely, with the National Guardsmen about, the carriage is safe while its occupants pray in the cathedral?”

  I was still kneeling, but I turned toward him now. I knew he didn’t want to arrest us. “The burden of motherhood sometimes frightens me, but I am praying for grace, for a Providence that protects one from danger. Will you join us, Monsieur? The more people that pray, the more powerful the prayer.”

  “That is an old superstition, Madame. You can do nothing against the dangers that are around you.”

  “I can put myself in the hands of the tenet behind all these candles lit in these various chapels, behind the very structure of this ancient church—mercy.”

  The morning light was full on Arnaut’s young face, and he looked at me, then at Paul, silently kneeling, then back at me. “This coachman has yellow hair. Your other one had black hair.”

  “I am praying, Arnaut, for my family. You had asked me if there was anything you could do to help.”

  “I am not a traitor.”

  “And you also know what is right.”

  “I know what I ought to do.”

  “Don’t do it.”

  “I cannot help it, Madame.”

  He put his hand out toward Paul, and it was trembling. “You,” he said, “come with me.”

  “You don’t have to do it,” I persisted. “He wronged no one. What good will killing him do? We are leaving. We are fleeing France and will not return.”

  Arnaut moved toward me, and I could see the sweat on his forehead. “You are not special,” he said. “But you are beautiful. And you are brave. I care nothing for this one, bruised and filthy like a criminal, but for you I would lie. I don’t know why. I’m a fool. Now go, after I leave. But if someone recognizes the prisoner, I will say where I saw your carriage, and it will not go well for you. You are, perhaps, more of a fool, than I.” He pivoted, and his boots clicked toward the transept chapels.

  “Nothing, again,” Arnaut said crisply.

  “It took you long enough. Saying a paternoster for your dead mother?”

  “My mother is not dead.”

  “For your girl to lie with you?”

  “I have no girl. Let us go, I do not like churches.”

  I heard their boots echo back down the long nave, and I loved that boy, and wished that he would not get killed in the war and that I would never see him again.

  I stood up and leaned on the altar, and Paul put his arms around me, and I buried my head in his coat. Suddenly, I thought he looked so absurd in this coat that was too big for him that I started to laugh; trying to muffle my giggles. I realized how close we had come.

  “Not now,” Paul chided softly. When the fit subsided, I brushed the laughter-tears from my eyes and looked down at my hands in Paul’s wounded ones.

  “Your poor hands,” I said, then it seemed ridiculous that I should feel sorry for hands, when everything had been at stake, and I put my face into Jean’s old coat again and held on to Paul. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had come, and I felt a great need to relieve myself.

  I asked Paul to go check on the carriage, as it should not be left unattended for so long, and said I would meet him there. When I heard his footsteps far down the nave, I rushed into the next chapel.

  I did not want to use this one; it had protected us. I went behind the altar, said a brief prayer for forgiveness, knowing that I would be given understanding, and relieved myself. I felt the sound of water on stone could surely be heard out in the transept, but no one came.

  Before I left, I took off one of my petticoats and mopped it up and left the petticoat rolled up behind the altar. When I left, I looked above the entrance of the little chapel and saw that it was the private chapel of the mayor of Blois and his family.

  There was still so much that I wished were over. I did not want to risk going through the square, nor going along the quai near the abbey, where they would probably also be looking, so we would have to go out of our way, up the hill, around the huge château de Blois, and back to the bridge that way.

  I wanted to skip over time and have us all traveling north in the carriage on peaceful country roads and hear Gérard ask if he could ride up front with his father. Marguerite would say no. I walked back down the nave, dipped my fingers in the holy water, and walked out into the brightness of a still early morning.

  A Narrow Ledge

  When we drove by the officer at the intersection, I nodded my head politely to him. Now we took the narrow road around the château. I glanced up. If things went right, it would perhaps be the last time I would see the crazy asymmetry of those windows and balconies of old François I, looking like some eastern palace, not like the abandoned château it was, now barracks for the military. I had always liked it. It was the château of my city and it was unlike any other, with its different wings built in different centuries. And I liked the winding, sculpted stone staircase in which Marguerite and I had once, in another life, chased each other around and around, and stood on the balconies and imagined the torchlit ca
rriages of guests stopping below. Even then it had been abandoned.

  The château de Blois had seen murders of dukes and cardinals, the poison collection of Catherine de Medici. My little intrigue was laughable in comparison. I pulled out Etienne’s watch from a pocket in my dress. We were almost thirty minutes behind the schedule I had made. I imagined the ghost of Catherine de Médicis, the witch queen from Florence, cackling at me from the window of her ransacked room.

  I prayed to Sainte Lucette that we make good time, that we get back to chez Vincent well before the inevitable arrival of the National Guard.

  I finally felt the roll of the carriage down the hill toward the bridge.

  Guards at the bridge stopped us, and it was the same as at the intersection. Paul seemed to pass as a coachman. Perhaps it would have been that way in the market square too, and I had made a wrong decision, but I had been afraid at the square. We were among the traffic of the bridge, and the blue water moved lazily beneath us. I could see the vineyards on the slopes of chez Vincent now. Paul had made good time. We had only lost an hour, going into the church and taking the long way back by the château.

  I closed my eyes and realized how tired I was. Marguerite and the children would get in the carriage, and then I would sleep, even with Gérard chattering. Paul must be tired, but he was a man who had to protect his family, and he would not let himself be tired for a long time yet. I wanted it all to be over now. A dim fog floated behind my eyes. Then I opened them.

  Paul jumped down, and Marguerite came running out of the house, with the children following, and embraced her husband.

  “Are you ready?” Paul asked her.

  “We ’ve been ready for an hour. When I heard your carriage, I prayed that it was you and not the National Guardsmen.”

  Paul hugged Marie and kissed her cheeks, then squatted down and took Gérard by the shoulders.

  “Are you ready to take a trip to England?” he asked.

  “Papa, your face is hurt.”

  “It’s fine. I fell from a friend’s horse. We will have good riding in England. Come, help me put the bags on.”