Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution

by James Tipton

  And the marquis rose and bowed deeply, “I thank you for the fresh bread,” he said. “The clear water, the enjoyable feminine company, and I beg your forgiveness for the length of my stories.” He donned his hat at the door. “Something I learned from the red man,” he added; “the land is our mother, yet, like a mother, she is also, sometimes, under our protection. If ever, Mother of Orléans, you should change your mind about the institute, just wear a simple white ribbon in that straw bonnet of yours when you’re at market, and a friend of mine will talk to you. You might be interested to know that you have a new title. They now call you the Fearless Chouanne of Blois.” And he entered the garden and melted into the night.

  “The Fearless Chouanne of Blois, Madame?” Claudette said.

  “That is quite a title.”

  “I fear our marquis could have made it up.” I said. “He is fond of stories.”

  “But of true stories.” Claudette paused, then added, “And he was certainly handsome, Madame, not ’some old marquis,’ as Monsieur Philippe said; though he looked as I imagine a pirate would look—with that scar and sword and black eyes.”

  “A pirate with manners,” I said.

  The Letter

  I was out in the garden several days after our visit from our mysterious marquis. My tall tomatoes, intertwining with each other, round squash with yellow flowers, and climbing beans were a world in themselves now. A melon hid itself beneath overarching leaves. Caroline was in her place beneath the pear tree.

  It was Claudette’s turn to go into the tobacconist’s, and she returned with a letter from my mother.

  This was rare. Maman and I had had no communication since my letter after the boucherie incident, as I referred to it, if I referred to it at all. I opened the letter quickly. But it was not from my mother. She had merely written my address on a letter and enclosed within her page another letter. That one was short and signed by the Committee of Public Safety.

  Claudette heard my scream and came running from the house.

  She first looked at Caroline, to make sure she was all right, then at me. I had immediately dropped the letter, as if its pages were fire. I felt turned to stone. I stayed still, in the same position as when I had dropped the letter, my hand open and hanging at my side. Caroline had begun to cry when I screamed, and I just stood there. What I had read in the letter could not be. Claudette picked up my child, “Madame?” she said. I managed to point at the letter. “Is it Monsieur William?”

  I shook my head. I still couldn’t believe what I had read. I couldn’t say his name. Finally, “Etienne,” I said. “They’ve—” and I sat, or sank, down in the middle of my garden, crushing the lavender. I lay there, like a stone in a bed of lavender. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Claudette, while carrying Caroline, kneel down, pick up, and fold the letter. I heard her talking to Caroline in a light tone, and crying as she spoke, as they went back in the house. I could do neither. I could not cry, and I could not pretend to be happy for the sake of my own child. I could only lie there, looking blankly at the autumn blue sky, as if at a wall, smelling faintly the lavender around me. I had no desire to move and felt as if I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.

  I don’t know how much time had passed when Claudette came back out to the garden. I was still in the same place. I noticed shade had moved over the tomatoes. Claudette brought me a cup of water.

  “Drink,” she said.

  “No, thank you.”

  She placed the cup in the thyme by my head and left again.

  The shade had crept up my legs when Claudette returned with Caroline. “Sit up on your elbow and drink,” she ordered. “You’ve been lying for hours in the sun. You’ll get sick. You’ll turn all brown. Your daughter doesn’t know why she can’t see her maman. At least sit up.”

  With effort I leaned on my elbow. I felt like a dried-up creek bed in autumn. Nothing flowed. No tears. No feeling. No words. I sipped the water and put the cup down in the thyme.

  Claudette sat beside me, with Caroline in her arms, quiet, playing with Claudette’s pendant. She fingered the chain about Claudette’s neck. It was such an innocent gesture, but anything having to do with the neck now made me think of Etienne’s fate, and I felt vaguely nauseated. I had to look away. What could my child know of these things, of this world of which she was a part, and into which she would grow and want to love? With that thought, my numbness suddenly began to thaw into anger and into the urge to protect. I hadn’t been able to protect Etienne.

  “Did you read the letter?” I finally said to Claudette.

  Claudette shook her head. “I could guess its meaning,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  I took another sip of water.

  “He was arrested under the new Law of Suspects. For—” It was so difficult actually to say it, as if that made it more real. “For traveling with false papers,” I continued, “for attempting to flee the country, for consorting with known counter-revolutionaries. They executed him in Paris as an enemy of liberty,” and with the saying of it, suddenly something changed in me. “Sweet Etienne!” I said softly, and I couldn’t stop crying now and lay back in the faded lavender, my body convulsed with sobs against the herbs and the cool earth.

  And when there were no sobs left I felt myself alone in the dark garden. I only felt the sharp autumn coldness now and an emptiness that stretched from me to the vastness of the sky I looked into, and toward which the lavender around me faintly seemed to float.

  That night, as I lay unsleeping, Etienne as I last saw him came to my mind, clearly, as he stood in the dark by the gate, opened his watch, looked at my portrait, and said I should send him a new one, for he checked the time often.

  I crossed the bridge on foot (the count had warned me against La Rouge being seen by army officers), walked up the long hill to my mother’s house, and met her in the drawing room. The Queen of Protocol, as Angelique called her, the fearful figure of my youth, seemed to have grown frail overnight. She sobbed as soon as she saw me—perhaps because Etienne and I had done so much together, and I reminded her vividly of him—and we sat down together on the couch. I didn’t say anything. My own hatred and bitterness had fallen away in the wake of Etienne’s death. Sitting beside Maman, I suddenly wanted to embrace her, for my sake as well as hers. I forced my arms up. Then they found their own way. I held her, as I would hold Caroline to comfort her when she would wake in the night, and thought, Etienne had been Maman’s baby.

  Monsieur Vergez had discreetly absented himself.

  I murmured something to Maman that there was another world, and she suddenly said, “I cry also for you.” She pulled away to look at me. “I betrayed you,” she said. “Etienne was always happiest when playing with you—running, riding—perhaps he knew something I didn’t. And I thought it was a weakness in your father, indeed in any man, that he loved you with such abandon—as if heaven had sent you just for him. But he too, perhaps, knew something I didn’t.” She dried her eyes now with her embroidered handkerchief and looked straight at me. “You were the recalcitrant one, the independent one.

  Now I want to say this before it is too late. Listen. I misunderstood my authority, Annette. I considered only what would give you the best advantage in life. I wanted to help you with my experience and stifled my desire to show you sympathy as a weakness in myself. I thought I was fulfilling my duty to you, but I misjudged. I neglected another duty—the natural one of a mother to her child’s happiness. I don’t want you to die and think I never loved you. In this world one can choose severity over sympathy and think one is doing right.”

  “I’m not going to die, Maman, and, now that I am a mother, I know how difficult it is. Every time Caroline cries, should I pick her up?”

  “Just do not harden your heart, my dear. The Revolution has shown us that the advantages and opinion of society, which I thought everything, are really nothing, and always have been nothing. It is only our vanity that led us to believe otherwise, and one is no
t rewarded for vanity. I, for instance, am severely punished for mine. Etienne was always a gentle child, of an open heart. I choose now to bury my vanity in his virtue. And you—you go marry your Englishman, if you like.”

  I almost laughed through my own tears. “There is a war on, Maman. And his country is on the other side.”

  “We could all go anytime,” she said. “Bring Caroline to me. Let her know she has a grandmother.”

  Angelique entered the drawing room, and she ran to me and sat on my other side on the couch, and buried her blonde head on my shoulder, already wet from her mother’s tears.

  Delicious Revenge

  Two days later was Saturday, the busiest market day, in which we, with our humble goods, would not be participating. I left Caroline with Claudette and went to market with a basket on my arm. It was half full of sausage, leeks, Normandy cheese, and perch when I heard, at my elbow, “That simple silk ribbon is very becoming in your straw bonnet, Citizeness.”

  I turned and saw a woman younger than myself, about Angelique’s age, with a long brown apron over her dress and a green scarf knotted into a cap on her head, and a striped yellow and green kerchief around her shoulders. Long black curls poured out from under her scarf-cap, and she had big, serious eyes. “Would you like to see the ribbons I have for sale?” she said, and I followed her over to a small table on the side of the market, where silk and cloth ribbons of black, red, blue, white, and yellow lay draped over a tablecloth.

  Others twirled in a breeze like tiny banners in a type of wooden lattice she had for displaying them. Various striped and plain scarves were folded also on the table. “No green, though,” she said, “it’s still a bit risky. Though I’ve always liked the color myself, as you can tell from the one I wear.”

  “You are different from the other scarf and ribbon lady,” I said. “Is this your table now?”

  “Things are always changing,” she said.

  I fingered the fine ribbons. “I could use another white one,” I said.

  “It goes with anything.”

  “With an aigrette for one’s bonnet, perhaps? I am Jeanne Robin, and I am a member of a certain philanthropic institute.”

  “Madame Williams. I have heard of the good work you do. And I have changed my mind about helping you.”

  A middle-aged woman and her mother approached the table.

  “Look at these pretty ribbons,” said the older lady. “Wouldn’t you like to wear these at a dance?”

  “They can make any hat, no matter how plain, look like it’s a holiday,” Jeanne Robin said.

  “What holidays?” the old lady said. “As I recall, Michaelmas came and went without anyone noticing.”

  “Come, Maman, I need a new hat before I get a new ribbon for it,” and they walked on.

  “A certain officer named Lieutenant Leforges—” Jeanne Robin said, in a soft but lilting voice over the scarves.

  “Excuse me, you said Leforges?”

  “Yes, you know a Lieutenant Leforges?”

  “I knew someone of that surname, a long time ago.”

  “People make new identities for themselves these days. He may be the same man, or—”

  “It’s no matter, please continue.”

  “This officer, together with a sans-culotte—you can’t miss them, one elegant, one straight from the streets of Paris—will be in the square in front of the Louis XII fountain tomorrow around ten. This morning there the lieutenant forced locals to watch him and the sans-culotte almost destroy the beautiful fountain because of its name. Now the people can’t use it. You’ve heard that ancient church properties—here in Blois, Saint-Louis Cathedral and the churches of Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Vincent—now pay rent as ‘national buildings.’ This lieutenant, working for the new representative-on-mission from Paris, is collecting rents from these national buildings throughout the Loire Valley. (I understand he also gives dance lessons to officers’ wives in the evening.) He will move on to Amboise in two days. Just observe him tomorrow morning. We ’ll decide later, after he has collected his rents, how we can make better use of them than he. I’ll be by the fountain in the square by noon.”

  “That is all?”

  “Scouting the enemy is the first stage of an engagement. If you wish to do more, decide after that. The founder of our institute has great faith in you.”

  “Until tomorrow, then,” I said. “These are pretty,” I added, my voice raised to a regular marketing level, “but I don’t need them now, thank you,” and proceeded to a table piled high with heads of lettuce.

  “Annette! Annette!” My friend Isabelle Tristant, whom I had not seen in a long time, rushed up and kissed me. She said she had heard I had been in trouble. Was I all right now? Where was I living? She said she liked my bonnet with the white silk ribbon. She would like one like that. She had heard I had a daughter! She didn’t even know that I had married my English friend! Shame on me for not telling her. And how like me to be so secretive. In convent school, I had always kept from her, Isabelle, what I was reading or writing. But how charming to have a little baby! Isabelle was sure my baby was a very pretty little girl. But Isabelle never saw me at dances anymore.

  She saw Angelique. It must be dull, sometimes, being a mother, Isabelle said.

  I remembered what Maman had said about Isabelle and her mother’s visit to chez Vergez when I was in prison. I wanted only to disappear. But I was saved from responding to her barrage of questions and comments when a fashionable older lady joined us. Blonde ringlets danced above her shoulders, and silver earrings in some design I couldn’t recognize peeked out from the curls. Isabelle smilingly said, “But you remember my maman, Annette.” True, I remembered her as always a “lady of style and taste,” but with dark, not fair, hair. I recognized her eyes and features now.

  “Ah, Annette”—Madame Tristant laughed—“don’t be confused.

  It is I. It is just the new mode, from Paris. I secretly always wanted to be blonde, like your pretty sister Angelique. Well, now, it’s all the rage to be blonde, and it’s inexpensive. Would you like to know my secret?” She leaned in as if to whisper to me, and as she did so, I saw her earrings closer, and I inadvertently stepped back. My shopping basket slipped from my arm, and I just caught it before all its contents tumbled out. As it was, only one head of lettuce fell on the ground. I picked it up, leaving some leaves on the paving stones.

  Madame Tristant’s earrings were in the shape of little guillotines. I didn’t want to know about the hair, now. “The new mode, Annette,” Madame Tristant said, not in a whisper, “and I’m surprised you don’t know it—is a blonde wig made from counter-revolutionaries who lost their heads!” She sounded excited, as if she were a girl finding out about a new fashion that she was going to wear now to a dance. “I know it’s wicked,” she said, “but when else will one have the opportunity to be blonde, ever? Usually good wigs are so expensive. And these earrings came with the wig, too. Can you believe it? An ensemble for the femme patriote. You know fashions change with the times, and Monsieur Tristant always says, ’show that you’re a good republican; let them see that you’re a good republican.’ It’s like wearing a cockade, but much more à la mode. ”

  “I want to get one too,” Isabelle said, “but Maman says we must wait till the next shipment from Paris.” Isabelle giggled.

  I felt light-headed and dizzy. I was afraid I would fall onto the table of lettuce heads. I grabbed the table edge. “Angelique is doing well, thank you.” It was the only thing I could think of to say. I added, “Excuse me, I have to go. I’m late—my daughter,” and I almost ran from the square. I heard the din of the market behind me now, but I was in my own roaring, silent world.

  Later that day I asked Claudette to go back to the market to purchase a Normandy cheese and to give a simple note to the lady at the ribbons table. When I had recovered my reason, I realized Madame Tristant had given me an idea.

  Please provide me with a blonde wig—but not from Paris. I would like, onc
e again, to go to a fancy-dress ball.

  —Madame W.

  I sat with Caroline in my lap at the Café de Liberté (formerly Café Louis XII, named after the fountain) and sipped a tisane. The morning sun sparkled in the remains of the Louis XII fountain. Not far behind it were the abbey and the church of Saint-Nicolas. And there, giving orders by a wagon at the edge of the square, stood my old dance instructor: he who first had inspired me to love; he who had betrayed me, and he who had denounced William and the count and would have been responsible for their deaths. His boots sparkled like the water in the sunlit, ruined fountain. His belt buckle and buttons shone. His white trousers were pressed smooth and tight. He had more gold braid on his blue coat than any officer I had ever seen, and he was only a lieutenant. A tall red plume topped the cockade on his black hat. He always had on some costume or other.

  His assistant, on the other hand, a large man, wore a short, stained brown jacket with a red collar, no waistcoat, ragged striped trousers, and the red woolen bonnet that was at once the identity and the symbol of every sans-culotte . Stringy, greasy hair hung down his face. A pipe seemed glued to his mouth, and, like some old primitive, he carried about with him a small wooden club.

  I had heard a lot about his kind from the people whom I had helped in the secret room at chez Dubourg and at the count’s lodge. The sans-culottes, a real political force for the Jacobins in Paris, had also become infamous outside of their city for terrorizing the provinces, for whom the sans-culottes had nothing but contempt. Usually in a gang of about six to eight, they accompanied representatives-on-mission from Paris, beating and hauling off villagers who resisted conscription, searching for and arresting refractory priests, and setting fire to crops of the families who had protected the draft evaders or hidden the priests.

  Now the sans-culotte in our square in Blois placed the club down in the wagon and lifted out a statue. Lieutenant Leforges was commanding him to place the statue at the edge of the erstwhile fountain.