Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution

by James Tipton

  I stood back and let them file past, some nodding their heads at me, some looking straight ahead. All the faces seemed tight and strained.

  Then I heard a relaxed voice beside me. “You are on the hunt again, Mademoiselle Vallon.” I turned to see a short, portly, black-bearded man in a green woolen riding cloak like mine, but his was trimmed with gold braid. I recognized the baron de Tardiff, one of the count’s old circle whom I had hunted with on autumn mornings in another age. “You have that fine mare with you?” he said.

  “We ’re walking tonight, Baron. What are you here for?”

  “An artillery and a cavalry officer were arguing over whether they would use my horses to pull cannon or to ride directly into musket fire. As that would be a great injustice to my horses, I set the dogs on the men and led my horses, as fast as I could, to a hidden ravine in the forest. They arrested me as I returned home. Excuse me.” Most of the people were past me now, and the baron helped prop up the ailing farmer; this didn’t work, so he joined another farmer in carrying the sick man. The baron grinned at me as he walked past. Fate and danger have made us all like old friends, I heard the young chevalier saying in my mind.

  Cool air blew from behind me into the stuffy, foul air of the cells.

  Everyone was moving quietly and efficiently.

  “If nothing more is required of me, Madame,” said the self-appointed leader of the prisoners, the older aristocrat who had first approached me, “I will leave too. But I’d watch that one, though,” and he jerked his head. “The others have shunned her because she answered the attentions of the guard.”

  I thanked him, and he vanished into the crypt, leaving in the cellar only two women with a sleeping boy of about four or five: the younger woman who, I remembered now, had liked the Journal of Style and Taste, and her mother, who seemed very agitated, standing beside her . The young woman was looking up the stairs that must lead to where the guards stay, and her mother was pulling her arm.

  “Leave me alone,” she said to her mother.

  “Don’t be an imbecile,” her mother said, but the young woman didn’t move, and her mother ran past me, crying.

  “It is time to go,” I said.

  The young mother roused her sleeping boy, who cried out and waved his arms, as in a bad dream. She instinctively put her hand over his mouth, and, as his eyes were still closed, this brought on more of a panic.

  Then I heard a door open, the sound of boots on stairs, a voice calling, “What’s the matter, then?” and a young National Guardsman appeared, a stunned look on his face, his open mouth immediately silenced by the sight of my pistol pointed through the bars at his chest.

  “You will be quiet, Monsieur, or you will die. It is very simple. I am not afraid to sacrifice your life for all of these others. Enter.” I motioned him to enter the cell, and he took out his keys with a steady hand and unlocked it and entered.

  “Now lock it,” I said. He reached through the bars and did so.

  “And give me the keys.”

  The woman who liked the Journal of Style and Taste finally spoke.

  “Georges,” she said. “Georges, listen, you do not have to be left here.”

  “Yes, he does,” I said.

  “No, Madame, he can come with us.”

  “Look at his uniform,” I said.

  “Georges, come with us,” the Journal lady continued.

  “Madame,” I said, “either you come with us, or you stay here. I don’t care, but make your choice.”

  “Georges, do you love me?” she said.

  “We don’t have time for this,” I said.

  Georges nodded.

  “Georges, will you come with me?”

  Georges nodded again. The present situation seemed to render Georges beyond the capacity of speech.

  “Georges,” I said, “do you care more about Madame here than about your position or your cause?”

  George dutifully nodded again. “Well, it might be safer not leaving you here,” I said. “Madame, are you willing to let him be responsible for your child’s life and carry him to the quai?”

  “Of course. Georges has always been caring to petit Charles. He brought Charles milk in the prison.”

  “Georges,” I said, “do you realize I will be right behind you, and if you try to escape or to warn anyone I will shoot you, or if that is too noisy, I will stab you with my dagger, just as the famous Charlotte Corday did to Citizen Marat in his bath. A woman can do it. Do you understand?”

  Georges nodded once again and picked up the boy, and with the muzzle of the pistol, I motioned for him to go in front of me. “Now quickly, Madame,” I said. I was growing worried that the others were too far ahead of us. And I wanted to be there when they all boarded the boats. “Fast, now,” I said. “There is nothing that will harm you in there,” but Madame was afraid of entering the dark passage first. All the others had someone right in front of them and periodic candles.

  “Georges, you go first,” I said, and pushed him in front of Madame.

  “Just stay where I can see you, Georges,” I said. “You’ll both have to use the light from my candle. Hurry.”

  Georges, to his martial credit, walked quickly through the passage.

  Madame only gave one gasp at the corpse of the old bishop, and I directed Georges through the crypt. I patted Chevalier Destigny’s tomb with the pistol in my hand, and it made a clicking noise, at which both Georges and Madame jumped and turned around. I shrugged, then dropped the prison keys on his tomb. By the time we were in the cathedral, we saw the others trailing out through the door of the side chapel. And from the foot of the cathedral I saw under a crescent autumn moon a strange and wonderful sight: a long, dark, silent line of moving figures wound down a narrow alley, crossed back upon itself at a stairway farther down, and curved into another alley. Jean, gored with that boar’s tusk years ago, was leading them well.

  I hurried the loving couple, now looking like a little family, until we were right behind the last ones. The young woman’s mother turned around and saw her daughter and grandson. She let Georges and the boy pass, then showered her daughter with kisses, without either of them slowing their pace. Then I saw the baron, still helping carry the ailing farmer, stumble on the stairs; the sick man fell and moaned loudly, and a hiss of whispered voices reached me. Immediately the line took shape again and wove, like a black phantom serpent, through the oldest quarter of the town. I saw the dark broad body of the river through the narrow opening of the last alley, and I knew my work was almost done. I wanted to make sure the people didn’t crowd the open quai, but kept to the shadows and quietly boarded the boat. “Watch him,” I said to Madame, and ran ahead to the front of the long line and saw Jean’s scared face.

  “Where’s the boat?” he said.

  The Sainte Lucette

  I stood on the quai Abbé, with no boat moored up- or downriver, and a crowd starting to murmur behind me.

  Some would see this as a plot: they had been betrayed into further proving their guilt by attempting to escape; others would simply start to panic.

  “It must be here,” I said. Now I started to doubt the count.

  “What is that there?” I said. I pointed about twenty yards out, to a large vessel with a sail sixty feet high.

  “That can’t be ours,” Jean said. “All these people can’t swim.”

  “Light your candle again.” He did so, and held it up, and immediately a light answered. I dimly saw a rowboat detach itself and heard the dipping of its oars. When it reached the quai, one sailor tied it to a post and stood up. He had a white feather in his cap. He jauntily mounted the stone steps.

  “Long live Louis XVII!” he said.

  The young prince was guarded heavily in prison, and I thought this a most absurd greeting. “All these people can’t fit in that boat,” I said. “We don’t have time to make many trips. The night patrol will be along soon.”

  “I am sorry, Madame,” the royalist sailor said. “The only ve
ssel we could get had too big a hull to come into shore. But she’s fast. I brought a rope.”

  “A rope?”

  “Yes, Madame. The old or too young can make one or two trips in my boat. The others can pull themselves along the rope.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “It’s quite easy,” he said. “I’ve done it many times.”

  “These are women and children and farmers,” I said, “not sailors.”

  “Is the rope secure?” It was the voice of the baron, again beside me.

  “Yes, Monsieur,” said the sailor, “I just tied it myself and my knots never fail.”

  “Then I suggest women and children step into the boat,” the baron said, “and I will be the first on the rope.”

  “There are too many women,” I said “Annette, some will have to follow on the rope,” the baron said.

  “They will do it if they see one person do it first. And you know that some women can do things well that are thought unnatural for them to do.” And he went over to the dark mass of people at the edge of the quai and explained what they had to do. I added to the young women that this would be the adventure of their lives, something to tell their children and grandchildren. What else could I say?

  “Who is this?” The baron pointed at the guardsman, carrying a little boy.

  “That’s Georges,” I said, “he’s the new father.”

  “Well, you better stay quiet, Georges,” the baron said, “or she will slit your tongue.” He pointed at me. “I’ve seen her do worse.”

  “I still don’t trust you, Georges,” I said, “and I’ll watch you.”

  Georges nodded. He had grown on me. “Madame and the child will take the boat. You’ll have to take the rope.” The compliant Georges nodded again.

  “I’ll go with him,” the Journal lady said. “Charles, you get to go with Grandmère in the boat,” and she handed the boy to his grandmother.

  The first boatload of the very old and young rowed off, and the baron, complete with boots and cloak, lowered himself into the cold, dark water. The men started to follow him. “Women should go in between the men,” I said, “not all at the end.”

  “You go first,” a woman’s voice said to me in the dark.

  It was my job just to bring them here. I had done that. I wasn’t escaping with them, as was the baron. But I didn’t want to explain all that, then, to the voice in the dark and to the other fearful women. I just wanted them off the quai and onto the boat. It endangered us all, every minute they stayed here. And I could see her point. As their trusted leader to this point, I didn’t want to ask them to do anything I myself wouldn’t do. I removed my petticoats from under my riding skirt, stepped out of them, undid the skirt’s lower buttons, then sat down on the cobbles and pulled off my boots. I gave Jean my hat, pistol, riding cloak, and boots.

  Going willingly into dark water in the middle of the night was, like entering a tomb in a crypt, unnatural. I think it was the idea of the cold that made me hesitate, when I couldn’t afford to hesitate. Again, showing fear was out of the question. So I went in. At the first shock of the water I gasped involuntarily. The Loire is just trickles between sandbanks in the summer, but after the first autumn rains it immediately swells on its long journey, and now the river piled up heavily against me and pushed me away from the rope. I had to hold it with all my strength, and, since my arms are not strong, kick with my legs under the water toward the boat, and the skirt hampered my movements. Now other women were undressing on the quai and entering the river. I heard a series of gasps at the coldness. “Tell them to kick, not just pull themselves,” I said, teeth chattering, to the young man behind me on the rope, and he passed it on.

  I was at the side of the boat when I saw a woman, several people down the line from me, lose her grip and slip away with the current.

  The man next to her; the one I had thought of as a giant, caught her with one hand and slowly pulled her back to the rope. Now two strong sailors were hauling us up to the low deck. A big, bearded sailor said to me, “Welcome aboard the Sainte Lucette, Mademoiselle.”

  I was taken aback. I prayed to Lucette daily. It was quite a coincidence, as no boats had saints’ names anymore. But this was a royalist boat.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Do you have any blankets on board?”

  “There’s some below,” he said distractedly. “These ones are moving too slowly now. Look at them. The shore patrol comes in twenty minutes.”

  I went below decks and gathered blankets, and when I returned I saw the rowboat make a third run back and the rest of the dark blurs on the quai gradually disappear without sound into the water.

  It seemed as if it took an hour. The sailor who greeted me was now helping the last ones up on deck. The other I met was tying his rowboat up to the side of the boat. “Wait,” I said, “I have to get back.”

  “You want to go back?”

  I plunged in and grabbed the rope as I hit the water. It was harder alone, with only the swift dark water swirling around me and wanting to take me all the way to Nantes, or to the Atlantic. I was also tired.

  I didn’t realize how tired I was. The quai seemed so far away. My hands felt too numb to hold the rope tightly. If I just put one hand in front of the other on the rope, I thought, and concentrate on holding on, the quai will get closer. Jean’s worried face grew clearer slowly, looking at me, glancing east along the quai, then back at me. I kicked and tugged and grunted against the power of the river, coming up and slapping me in the face for my impudence with each lunge I took along the rope, then my feet felt the wooden pile of the quai, and Jean knelt and hauled me up, like a limp fish, out of the black water, and draped my riding cloak around me. As I put on my boots we heard the sound of other boots on cobbles, the night patrol, walking downriver from the quai Saint-Jean. The bridge would obstruct their view for another minute. I tried to untie the rope, but my hands were too cold to do anything. “Let’s go,” Jean said.

  “We can’t leave it dangling here,” I said. Jean cursed under his breath, loosened the rope, and it slithered quickly back toward the boat, now floating west with the current, its large sail full.

  Jean had gathered up all the petticoats and thrown them in a nearby alley. He handed me my effects, and with his limping gait, we ran across the open quai into the alley we had emerged out of and hid in the darkness until the sound of the boots and of the voices passed. They apparently had heard nothing from the Town Hall. It was better, I think, that Georges had gone with young madame.

  Because of sentries on the bridge at night and the curfew, I couldn’t return to the cottage, so I followed Jean home. It was a long walk, back through the winding alleys, up the stairs, around the edge of the square, and up more steep streets to what I still called, in my mind, chez Vallon, on its hill over the city. By the time I got there, my wet clothes clinging to my body all the way, I was stiff and aching with cold.

  Jean woke up Angelique, who brought a blanket and a dry shift and met me in the stable. With my riding cloak and the blanket, I arranged a bed on the straw of La Rouge’s old stall. I was shivering now, and Angelique hung my wet clothes up on hooks in the stall and regarded me in the lantern light. “Are you comfortable now, you old mare?” she said.

  I nodded, but could not speak because of the shivering.

  “You’re really quite absurd, you know,” she said. “Look at you. How many people did you save tonight? Twenty out of the thousand that the Committee of Public Safety will arrest again tomorrow? I wanted to bring you something warm to drink, but I didn’t want to alert any of Vergez’s servants, so I just brought this. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to grab a glass.” She handed me a small decanter. I was shivering too much to hold it.

  “You’re so ridiculous,” she said, and drank some herself. “It’s fine without a glass,” she said, “apricot brandy from Angers.” I felt its warmth flow through my veins. I took a second sip and gave it back to her. Angelique put the bottle down and brushed my we
t hair back from my forehead with her hand. “You’re the most ridiculous person I have ever known,” she said. “You think you can take on the whole Revolutionary Army by yourself. You and Jean with his limp. Someday you’ll get yourself killed and leave me alone with stinking Vergez and Maman the Queen of Protocol and your little baby and Claudette, and I’ll have to help Claudette and cook and work in the garden like you two do and destroy my hands and never go to dances. Oh, they still hold them. See what you’re missing. I know you like dancing, and you were so good at it.” She was still stroking my forehead, and she gave me another sip of brandy. My limbs were quieting down.

  “There, you’re all right now,” she said. “It’s too bad you had to go and fall in love with an Englishman, Annette. Really. And Marguerite gone. You have no idea how lonely it gets. Oh, Etienne and his friend went to all the dances with me. Etienne has an eye for the ladies now, and they for him. And his friend almost got into a fight with a National Guard officer. I calmed them down. I’m going to bring you some water, now. I’ll have to take the brandy. I don’t know what you were doing tonight, and I don’t want to know, but I think nothing’s worth you ending up like this in the middle of the night and sleeping in a horse stall. You’re the most ridiculous person I know,” and she kissed me on the forehead and left. A few minutes later she came back with a jug of water and blew out the lantern.

  Early the next morning, after a few hours of sleep, I rolled up my still-wet clothes, hid them under my riding cloak, and walked down through the quiet town and across the bridge with the first carts. A sentry looked at me as if he knew what I had been up to all night in town. I passed the cloisters of Saint-Saturnin, then saw the smoke rising from the chimney of our own cottage and heard our clucking chickens as I opened our little gate. I was still exhausted, physically and emotionally, from the night before. As Claudette opened the door with Caroline in her arms, and I saw my friend’s relieved expression and my daughter’s beaming face, I thought, it’s time to retire from the Chouans. Caroline reached out her arms to me, and I picked her up and nestled her in my arms.