by James Tipton
Not anymore,” but it was with less enthusiasm than before. I hardly noticed them as Alain helped me back into the carriage and closed the door behind us. I had Caroline. I felt the carriage lurch forward down the alley, and the taunting voices were like a nightmare receding.
The three of us were quiet at first, a bit stunned, I think; then crossing rue Royale seemed to set Angelique and Claudette’s tongues free.
They chattered madly. They must have been as scared as I. Now they were laughing and complimenting each other. Then they moved on to the topic of their sweethearts: Angelique’s Philippe, the count’s son, and Claudette’s Benoît, his footman. They exclaimed with delight how they might both end up living at the château de Beauregard. This thought had never occurred to them before.
I gazed into Caroline’s face, smoothed of its grief. I still feared the reach and influence of Monsieur Vergez’s malice. I would never return to chez Vergez. They continued in their giddiness, oblivious.
“You’re a marvelous actress, Mademoiselle Angelique. You should go on the stage.”
“You’re a wild citizeness, Claudette Valcroix. You should join the men at the wars.”
Once Caroline was asleep in my room, exhaustion filled my limbs with a heaviness they had never known before. But when I lay down on my bed, rage drove out fatigue. I could not sleep for composing a letter answering the one I had received the day before.
Maman, this is our tête-à-tête: how can I say it plainly and clearly?
Prudence dictates that I banish you for life from your grandchild.
Your act, so opposed to true maternal solicitude, should incite in you a fear of burning in the afterlife, if it were not that your overwhelming self-righteous ness prorogues such a fear to the time when you must account for your actions. This child shall receive my blessing to the end of my days, a gift I cannot fully claim I received from my own mother. What depths of vanity could allow you to place reputation and Vergez’s career before the promptings of your own mother’s heart? What blind belief in propaganda could make you invoke the name of Citizen Robespierre as a paragon of moral rectitude? What rectitude is there in silencing compassion? You asked me to pity you, and I do. Yes, it’s a cruel world, and yes, we must all pay the consequences of our actions. But I don’t believe we are born to suffer. We may be born to alleviate the suffering of others, never to increase it. Did you ever read Rousseau’s Emile, and his simple exhortation to the child: the most important lesson for every time of life—is this: “Never hurt anybody.”
Though it may hurt you, Maman, to know that Caroline’s smile is a thing you will never see.
I got up from my bed, wrapped a shawl around me, lit a candle, and wrote it all down so I could sleep. Alain posted it the next day.
The Secret Room
The house was asleep, and my own eyes were heavy. I had been up with Caroline late at night and now had just finished brewing a tisane of tilleul leaves. I sat at the servant’s table in the kitchen and listened to the March wind and rain howl in the eaves of the house and in the two poplars that grew beside it. A small candelabrum lit the steam rising from my cup. Then I heard a knock. I thought it was just the wind against the shutters, but I heard it again. It was at the scullery door. Perhaps the footman had gone out to do one last chore and had locked himself out. I picked up the candelabrum, the knocking growing more insistent; it was not the knocking of a servant. Could it be William? I thought, irrationally. I put the candelabrum down on the cutting block and opened the door a crack. In the uncertain light, with water dripping from his hat and cape, I saw the lined but still handsome face of Count Thibaut. He smiled and said simply, “May I come in?”
He stood in the kitchen, hat in hand. “I saw you through the window,” he said, “and thought that my prayers had been answered.
I only wanted to talk to you. I trust you. I want no one else to know I’m here.”
“My, all this mystery, Count,” I said. “If you’re going to be so full of intrigue, let us discuss it in the drawing room. No one is up, don’t worry.”
He placed his tricorne hat on the table and his cape over a high-backed chair. I fed him some brandy for having been out in the cold and left the decanter at his disposal. He took a long sip. “I thought,” he said, “for a moment, just for a moment, that twenty-five years hadn’t passed and that it was your mother there, sitting in the halo of the candlelight. You know she was called ‘the beauty of Blois .’ You get more lovely every time I see you, Annette.”
“Intrigue seems to have brought out your old flattery, Count.”
I could not say the same for him. I had not seen him since Marguerite and I had visited him last September, when he was convalescing from his wound from the Tuileries massacre, and he had dark pouches now under his eyes. He said nothing and looked at his brandy, then around at the gilding of the fine carved paneling, catching the flicker of the candlelight.
“Much has changed, but not this room,” he finally said, as if to himself. “I attended many of the old fêtes at chez Dubourg.” Then he turned to me and gently said, “I hear you have a beautiful baby girl—”
“Where did you—”
“How is your Englishman?”
“Safe back in England.”
“That is good. It’s not a time for foreigners. It’s not a time for many of us.” And he laughed, a little.
“I heard that it was that old music teacher of yours who denounced him. Revenge twists men’s hearts, if he had a heart to twist. And what did he have to complain about? We merely made it uncomfortable for him to stay in Blois. Well, now he’s back preening himself with the most zealous of the Jacobins. He doesn’t care a sou for you or anyone. I should not have kept your father from running him through. How is your mother?”
“She’s busy being the wife of an important lawyer about to be elected to the trade tribunal. They’ve adjusted to the new order.”
“I was happy to see her well remarried. I was one of her only old friends who would come.”
“Yes.”
“You know my son has been seeing much of your sister.”
“Yes.”
“I believe he is very fond of her. Do you know if the feeling is mutual?”
“From what I know, yes.”
He looked down at his brandy. The glass was empty. “I’m afraid it must be obvious to you that I have not come here to discuss my son’s future plans,” he said and poured himself another brandy. “You know, if Angelique marries my son, she will have a title. That will please your mother. Not that titles are so important nowadays. In fact, they can get you in trouble. Which is why I dropped by chez Dubourg at this inopportune hour.”
He was becoming more like his old self, with the brandy. He twirled his sodden hat on the table. “Denouncing has become a prudent business, Annette. It serves two purposes. One gets a reward and, even more important, one looks like a patriot in the eyes of the Committee—an increasingly important reward in itself. It turns out your old friend, the dancing instructor, finished his steps by finding out from the erstwhile maidservant of the Vincents that I had been involved in the battle at the Tuileries—and on the wrong side. Like your Englishman, I was warned, by an old friend who has managed to keep his position as city magistrate—he invited me back, by the way, when this blows over, and he’s sure it will; he says everything changes every three weeks now—and when I return, he wants me to take over his situation; he has had enough of it. He says the town needs an old respected name on the bench, and he can put me there, vouch for my patriotism. I just have to disappear for a while.”
I must have looked surprised. “Didn’t you know, being the second son, I studied law before my brother died in the American war? I was not meant to be a count.”
“I never knew that,” I said. “All my life you were simply ‘the count.’ How could you be anything else?”
He took a long sip of brandy. “But my past and my dubious future aside,” he said, “in short, like Monsieur
William, I have to flee, and like him, I need your help.”
“I can make a guest room.”
“You know they have dismantled the Committees of Surveillance,” he said. “It’s a grand thing for civilization. The Girondins made such a fuss that the Jacobins were using those committees to set up their own dictatorship that the Assembly voted to disband them.”
“That’s great news, then—”
“No, my dear,” he said. “The Jacobins merely reformed them a month later under a different name. They are now part of the Committee of Public Safety, which is part of the Committee of General Security—those committees will soon control all of France. You see, one doesn’t need a king. One just needs a committee with a good name. Just say the words ‘patriot’ or ’security,’ and everyone will follow you.”
“I’ll find you that room—”
“I can’t stay in a guest room—or the servants’ quarters. No one must know I am here.”
He looked at my face and laughed. “I will not bother you or the baby. I hear you not only aided the Englishman but helped Paul Vincent escape from prison, and his family from France.”
“Those are just stories, and stories abound now. It is a time for intrigue.”
“Yes, it is a time for intrigue, and I ask you, Annette, to help me now. It will be as nothing, if you have done these dangerous things, and if you have not, it is still nothing.”
“Where would you like to stay?”
“Annette, I must be concealed in the secret room.”
I laughed. “I thought you knew this house. We have no such room.”
“It is behind the mirror, in the upstairs hall. I’ll show you.” He draped his cape over his left arm, held his hat and his glass easily in his left hand, and picked up the candelabrum in the other. He apparently didn’t want me to carry anything for him.
He walked before me up the stairs. We paused outside the floor-length mirror in the hall. The nearest room was unoccupied now. It had always been my mother’s since she visited Madame Dubourg as a girl and had been left as she liked it. The count moved as quietly and as gracefully as a cat. In front of the mirror stood a small inlaid marble table, a pale green porcelain vase on it. Beside the mirror stood the grand clock of veneered violet wood, mounted in gilded bronze.
“It has been a long time,” the count said.
The candlelight was reflected dully in the mirror, as were the count, the table, and I. The clock next to it said ten minutes past three. The count placed the candelabrum on the table. With the cape hanging like a black wing over his arm and the hat and glass poised in his hand, I watched in wonderment as he reached up behind the two bronze figures, clad only at the waist, who perched above the clock. The woman figure leaned over the man, dangling a bunch of grapes. The count ran his hands behind the gilded man about to enjoy a grape. His brow furrowed.
Perhaps his secret room has lost its entrance, I thought. Perhaps he’s thinking of another house. He’s getting old. He’s been under heavy burdens since the Tuileries massacre. He cursed under his breath. “My God, doesn’t anyone dust behind clocks anymore?” he whispered. Then his fingers caressed the back of the bronze woman’s thighs. I saw a smile appear on the count’s face. “How silly of me to forget,” he said. “It’s behind the woman, of course.” He pressed a hidden lever, and the mirror swiveled inward to reveal a small chamber with a double mirror framed in curling bronze vine leaves, a carved oak armoire, a vanity table with another mirror, a triple tray table, veneered with ebony, and a carved and gilt wood bed à la Turque—that is, with cushioned borders on three sides. All had a thick layer of dust on them. An arched door stood on the other side of the bed. The purpose of the room seemed obvious.
The count moved the marble table aside, bowed, and gestured for me to enter. “We must be discreet,” he whispered, and he reached up and pushed the button again, and the mirror swung back. He deftly picked up the candelabrum from the table before the room closed us in. The candle flames now flickered in the shadowy, doubled mirrors.
Twining roses covered the arched door and the unmirrored walls.
The count smiled with satisfaction. “It is a lovely room,” he said, and shivered. “But would you be so kind, Annette, as to do me one more favor—I’ll open the mirror from this side—could you please bring me a scuttle of coal? Just tap on the mirror.”
A horrible thought was troubling me. “Count—”
“We need to rest now,” he said. “It’s been a long day and night for me, and I assume for you too, my dear. Thank you so much. I am forever in your debt.”
“How did you know about this room?”
“Many of the old houses had secret rooms built into them, as the grand houses had petite maisons on their grounds. We used to play in here. This room is far older than I.”
“Whom did you play with here?”
“Card games among friends. A late meal on that amazing table—the middle tray slides out or can be raised or lowered. Here, watch—”
And he put his glass and hat on the top tray and slid the middle one out. A cloud of dust blew in his face.
“Now one can bring a dish to the card table, for instance.” He slid the tray back.
“Were you having a liaison with Madame Dubourg?”
“Madame Dubourg? My dear, look at her. A giraffe eating leaves in the Jardin des Plantes.” Then I saw instantly by his face that he knew the mistake he had made. He placed the candelabrum on the vanity table, and it shone back from the mirror.
“I am tired,” he said. “I speak nonsense. It’s just a room where we had private fêtes after a more public one. Those were jolly times. We were all young.” His sunken eyes looked deeper as he stood outside the immediate glow of the candlelight.
“Doesn’t that door,” I said with difficulty, “lead to Maman’s room?”
The count sighed and opened his mouth to speak. I didn’t give him time.
“You were friends with my father since your youth.”
“At university. He studied medicine, I law. We roamed Paris together.”
“Maman was girlhood friends with Madame Dubourg. She stayed here weeks at a time. And she married when she was sixteen. You wouldn’t have—before then—that means—”
“Annette, you don’t understand—”
“What don’t I understand? A definition of friendship that includes treachery?”
“My dear, sit down.”
“On that bed? I’d rather stand.”
“I am sorry you had to come to this conclusion.”
“Did you think I would be so stupid as not to guess? Or were you just thinking of yourself? As when you didn’t warn William and me about the brigands—”
“The deal was that the brigands stayed in the south end of the forest—”
“You make deals with the devil.” The count started to raise the glass to his lips but stopped.
I held my arms straight out from my sides, palms upward, as if I were going to dance, with a gentleman on either side. “This is such a lovely room,” I said, lightly. “So discreet. So prudent—Maman’s favorite words, you know. Card playing among friends. A late-night meal—on this wonderful table.” I pulled out the middle tray and threw it on the dusty floor. “Self-righteous, deceitful, lying hypocrites, the both of you! Oh, I should have not let you in and instead let the Committee wave your head high on a rusty pike. I will fetch you no coal, Monsieur Count. You can lie on your old dusty Turkish bed and freeze—”
Suddenly I started to cry and sat down on the bed in spite of myself. The count held his half-filled brandy glass in front of me, and I finished it, and coughed.
“You are quite right, my dear,” he said. “Everything you say is true. As far as your father goes, I told him, when we were out in the forest on a ride. I asked his forgiveness and said I would end it immediately, which I did. He rode away, without saying a word. He didn’t talk to me for a month. When hunting season resumed, I wondered if he would be there. He rode up to
me in the dawn and said simply, ‘Hatred is a waste of anyone’s time. My wife and I will have a family. You and I will hunt the stags, and the world will go on.’ That was a long time ago, Annette. Your father was an eminently worthy man, unlike myself. He intimated to me once that he had had some kind of vision in the forest.”
“He said something of that once to me—that two people he loved had hurt him, and he rode deep into the forest and—something appeared to him.”
“Do not blame your maman, Annette, if you know anything about love that grips you in your youth, about indiscretion....She and I knew each other before she met your papa, but it was my duty to marry a woman who had a title, and she...she preferred your father to me, it’s just...we were each other’s first passion. Love is not prudent. I think your maman has tried to give you the wisdom of her experience—though, from her lesson, she may err on the side of duty and authority rather than on that of natural feeling. If you could have known her at sixteen, at seventeen, her laughter, the look in her eye when she turned her head in a dance—”
I stared at the empty glass. I saw where my hand had made a print in the dust on the bed. A hundred candles flickered in the mirrors, reflecting each other indefinitely on in the distance, the shadowy figures of the count and me repeated manifold.
“You can see yourself a lot in this room,” I said.
“Yes, it’s regrettable,” he said.
“I’ll get you that coal. Your clothes are still wet. Stay here. Just let me out, please.”
When I returned, carrying a brass coal shuttle, I also brought with me a jug of water, a loaf of bread, and some cheese, and more candles. “I thought you might be hungry,” I said.
“You are your father’s daughter,” he said.
“My mother’s too,” I said. “Good night, Count.”
The next afternoon, five armed members from the Committee of Public Safety arrived at the door of chez Dubourg. They said that Count Thibaut of the château de Beauregard had last been seen in Orléans, and they were checking places in town where they knew he had friends. Before Monsieur Dubourg could say anything, I told them that no one here was a friend of the count’s; my parents had been. Nevertheless, they searched the house thoroughly, knocking over the green porcelain vase outside the gilded mirror, then left without saying anything.