Pernelle's Escape : A Rhetoric of Death Novella (9781101585832)

by Rock, Judith

  “Thank God for that. Will you be able to keep the child quiet?”

  “I’ll give her a little poppy syrup. She’s not yet three, too young to understand being quiet.” A smile lit Pernelle’s face. “She’s so beautiful, Charles. Wait till you see her. She’s very like David.” The smile faded. “The only one of my babies who lived. It’s hard to leave here. Where we—where she was born. Where they’re all buried.”

  Charles bent over the satchel. “You loved him, then. David.”

  That made Julie stiffen with disapproval, but Pernelle ignored her. She couldn’t see Charles’s face, but she heard how much the words cost him and her heart contracted. “I had to love him, Charles. I had no choice in marrying him, but when I saw that he was a good man, a man worth loving, yes, I came to love him.” Deliberately lightening her tone, she said, “Of course, it helped that his business was watches and not silk, as my father’s was. I didn’t have to hatch silkworm eggs every year in my cleavage. That was worth a lot.”

  He laughed, as she’d meant him to, and she knew he was remembering how much she’d hated mothering the eggs each year when the mulberry trees budded, as all the women in Nîmes’s silk families did. How she’d shrieked when the little bag of eggs hatched into wiggling worms.

  “Even after these ten years, you still sound so young when you laugh, Charles.”

  “And even after these ten years, you remembered our pope code.”

  When they’d been young and hiding their love behind the friendship of cousins, Pernelle had sometimes come out from the town to visit. They would wait until Charles’s formidable mother was too busy with some household matter to keep her usual watch on them. Then one of them would murmur, “The pope is very busy,” and they would escape to the dry garrigues behind the house.

  “I wouldn’t forget that any more than I’d forget your nickname, Bobo!”

  “No one ever forgets my nickname,” Charles said ruefully. “The bad luck of being born on Saint Bobo’s Day. Though why Saint Beuvron should have been called Bobo, I can’t imagine.”

  Pernelle laughed. “You and your saints and your popes,” she said, with mock severity.

  Julie made a disapproving noise—whether at her levity or the mention of saints and popes, Pernelle wasn’t sure. But she didn’t want Lucie to think about Charles the way Julie clearly was thinking. She turned on the girl fiercely. “Yes, Julie, he’s a Catholic and a Jesuit and he believes in popes and saints. And he’s as good a man as David and has come to get us out of here. If we’re caught, it will go as ill with him as with us.”

  Julie’s mouth trembled and she looked at the floor, but her body remained stubbornly rigid.

  Pernelle sighed and turned back to Charles. “She’s afraid. We’re all afraid. And she doesn’t really understand how it used to be. How Protestants and Catholics here have lived side by side for so long. The Protestants in Geneva, where she comes from, are as unbending as their original leader Jean Calvin was. He burned Catholics there, you know.” Shrugging, Pernelle eyed Charles, now taking the corks out of his little bottles. “So did you ever tell your mother about our pope signal?”

  “Of course not! You know she’d be insulted by the comparison—Catholics argue constantly over what the pope says. But no one argues with maman’s decrees, even now.” He bent to his satchel again as Pernelle laughed and Julie looked from one to the other of them, increasingly bewildered.

  “What are those bottles for?” Julie said sharply.

  “They’re theatre makeup.” He straightened, holding two rolled-up black bundles. “I teach rhetoric, mademoiselle, and help produce our college plays and ballets. And these are your costumes.”

  He shook out the black bundles, which revealed themselves as two nuns’ habits. Both women caught their breath in shock.

  “From Claire?” Pernelle said, eyeing them with distaste.

  “Yes. Maman’s idea.” He looked at Julie. “My sister Claire is a nun, Mademoiselle Bayle.” To Pernelle he said, “She’s the convent’s cellarer now, so it was easy for her to take these from the storeroom. I know neither of you wants to wear them. But they’re the best disguise you could have.”

  “No! It’s sin,” Julie flung at him. “Sin for you, too. You Catholics think we’re heretics. How can you let heretics pretend to be nuns?”

  Charles pressed his lips together and gave one of the habits to Pernelle. “Because, mademoiselle, I believe that cruelty inflicted in God’s name is much worse sin.”

  “But—do you not believe that your church is right? And ours wrong?”

  “I believe that cruelty is more wrong than either. And this is not the time to debate beliefs. There’s no time. Here.” He thrust the smaller of the two habits into Julie’s arms. “Both of you, put those on and come back quickly. Leave the wimples for now.”

  Pernelle swept Julie before her out of the room. When they returned, their faces set and white above the voluminous black gowns, Charles showed them how to tie the rope-like, rosary-hung cords around their waists. Julie averted her eyes from the beads swinging against her skirt, but Pernelle picked up the crucifix on the end of her rosary and cocked an ironic eyebrow.

  “A cross is a cross, I suppose. Even with the image—” Her face softened as she gazed at the tiny crucified figure. “Perhaps it’s no bad thing to carry such a reminder of His suffering. Since we are likely enough to suffer for what we’re doing.” She let the crucifix drop. “Now what, Charles? What are the little pots for?”

  He gave her a swift, grateful smile. “Disguising your faces. I took them from the college theatre storeroom. You first, if you please, Mademoiselle Julie. And you, Pernelle, if there’s anything more you must do, go and do it, so that when I’ve done your face, we can go.”

  Pernelle nodded briskly and went out. She was back within a few minutes. Charles was nearly finished covering the cream and roses of Julie’s childishly rounded face with a flurry of reddish pockmarks. Then he darkened her eyebrows, which were even lighter than his own, and examined his work.

  “Well enough. Go and put on the wimple. If you need help, bring it here. Pernelle, your turn.”

  The girl went out and Pernelle took her place. She smiled tiredly at him, and then lowered her eyes and stood like a statue while his hands came and went over her face. But as she stood there, the fear she had been holding at bay suddenly rose and she looked up.

  “Charles, the priest said—the parish priest who caught us—that whatever happened to me, they would give Lucie to a Catholic family to raise. He said I wouldn’t know where. So even if the soldiers didn’t kill me and I got free, I’d never find her!” She pressed clasped hands against her mouth, trying to silence the terror, but the hot tears spilled anyway and ran down her face.

  Charles picked up his makeup cloth and gently wiped them away. “Hush, ma chère, we don’t have time to do the makeup again. Hush and listen.” He began drawing lines on her forehead. “Do you remember how we used to climb the garrigues beyond the house? How you scrambled up the rocks, how fearless you were, how you never fell? You will get to Geneva, all three of you. Safely. And Lucie will grow up, and you will grow old, in safety. Even if I have to beg another habit from Claire and dress up as Sister Charlotte and take you there myself!” He waggled his thick fair eyebrows at her.

  Even tonight that made her laugh, as it always had. “Fearless yourself, mon cher cousin.”

  Julie came back and Charles nodded at her wimple. “Well done. It looks just right. Now. Here is the plan. My horse is tied outside the walls. Once we’re beyond the town, we’ll take the road for Avignon. If anyone asks, you are two sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and I’m your escort. Lucie has been in your care and we are taking her to an aunt near Avignon. Past Avignon, the nuns will disappear. Pernelle, you will become a poor but well-born Catholic widow—that explains your lack of a carri
age—with her daughter and maid.” He looked at Julie. “Can you be a maid?”

  Julie and Pernelle exchanged wry glances.

  “Charles,” Pernelle said, “have you really never noticed that any unmarried daughter might as well be a maid?”

  “Oh.” He looked sheepishly at her. “At least you will be convincing, mademoiselle. We’ll go to Carpentras. You’ll stay in a convent guest house near the Jesuit college until we find a party willing to take you toward the Swiss border. We’ll think of a story that explains your going there. It shouldn’t be too hard to find someone you can travel with. Well-placed women making pilgrimages often stop at the guest house.”

  He drew more lines around Pernelle’s mouth and handed her a small mirror from the satchel. Peering at the dim, greenish glass, she saw that he’d spread a net of fine lines over her thin face, dulled her color, and darkened the hollows under her cheekbones, aging her far beyond her twenty-six years into the old woman she would one day be. If she lived that long. If this night’s work succeeded. She gave him back the mirror, stood on tiptoe, and lightly kissed his cheek. Color flared where her lips had been, and he avoided her eyes and began packing the makeup back into its bag. To his surprise, Julie helped him.

  In the small chamber where Lucie was sleeping, nested in the center of the big curtained bed, Pernelle put on her white wimple and black veil. Then she woke the child, but Lucie, blinking up at her, shrank away from her and began to wail.

  “Little one, what is it?” Anxiously, Pernelle felt the little girl’s forehead, thinking, Don’t let her be ill, not now, please God.

  “Maman?” Lucie stared, wide-eyed, calmed by the familiar voice, but still uncertain.

  “Oh yes, it’s me, birdling, it’s your mama in these terrible clothes, I’m still here behind this old face, no need to be afraid.” She gathered her daughter into her arms, nuzzling her soft fat neck until Lucie burbled with laughter.

  “She looks exactly as you did at her age, Pernelle,” Charles said quietly from the doorway.

  Pernelle turned, smiling, and smoothed Lucie’s brown curls back from her forehead. “Oh, no, Charles, she’s much more like David. Except for her eyes, those are mine. His were blue like Julie’s.”

  “I remember you very clearly, you know, at that age.”

  “Nonsense, you were too little yourself.”

  “I was four. And I tell you that Lucie is you over again, just not so dark.”

  “I think so, too,” Julie said, behind him, and he moved aside to let her into the room. She went to the child and held out the small cup she carried. “A little milk, birdling.” And to Pernelle, “I put in the poppy syrup, just as you said.”

  Julie steadied the cup as Lucie put her hands around it and drank it down, spilling hardly any.

  Charles said, “Are we ready, then?”

  Pernelle looked one last time around the room that had been hers and David’s, her gaze lingering on the green-curtained bed. She gave Lucie to Julie and closed the bed curtains. She carefully straightened and smoothed the place where they met, her fingers caressing the white embroidered edges, remembering the thousands of stitches put there like hopes, like promises. Then she blew out the candle in the wall sconce.

  “Yes, Charles. We’re ready.”

  Chapter 3

  Pernelle led them downstairs to the kitchen. A pair of saddle bags, tightly packed with clothes, food, Lucie’s little wooden lamb, and small valuables, lay beside the door to the back courtyard.

  Charles said, “Wait here. I have to deal with the guard. If—”

  “Deal with him?” Julie said sharply.

  “No, not that. I’m going to make sure the new father continues to get his much-needed sleep. But if something goes wrong, if he cries out, if anyone comes, don’t come outside. Hide the bags, wash your faces, take off the habits, and get in bed. You’ve been sleeping, you know nothing. Not me, not why I attacked the guard, nothing. Now pray.”

  He slipped through the door, leaving it a little open so they could hear. They watched him hoist himself to the top of the wall. He leaned out and they heard a grunt. He was soon back inside.

  “He’s deep in a drunk’s sleep. I gave him a small tap on the head just to make sure he stays there. He’ll wake none the worse. Let’s go.”

  He picked up the saddle bags, and the women came behind him, Pernelle carrying the sleeping Lucie. Charles loaded the bags onto Blazon, David’s white-faced chestnut gelding, muffled the horse’s hooves with rags, and led him through the gate. He put a warning finger gently to his lips, handed Pernelle the reins, and went back into the courtyard, his long black cloak making him a shadow blacker than the darkness. He closed the gate and she heard the heavy inside bar thud home. Then the darkness above the wall thickened as he climbed over and dropped silently into the dirt lane. Thinking that he still had the same odd mix of recklessness and attention to details that he’d had when they were young, she handed back Blazon’s reins and the little band of fugitives made its way toward a gap in the town wall.

  As Pernelle picked her way through the pile of broken stone, she thought that this was one thing, at least, to thank the Catholic authorities for: letting the wall collapse, so that the Huguenots would have no walls to hide behind if they rebelled. When they were clear of the wall, Charles hurried them through the starlit dark to the tree-sheltered dip in the ground where his own horse was tied.

  “Does that farm track still run north beside the road?” he said softly to Pernelle as he unwound the muffling rags wrapped around Blazon’s hooves.

  “It does.”

  “Can you find it?”

  “Yes.” She gave Lucie into his arms and started toward the track. The other two followed, leading the horses. The only sounds were their own soft stumbling over the uneven ground, and a nightjar’s harsh sudden call from a pine. Then a man’s voice called from near the town wall and another voice answered. Charles hissed “Down!” and all three dropped to the ground. They lay without moving, leaving nothing to see from the wall but the dark shapes of grazing horses and three black humps in the ground. The voices turned to loud laughter and moved away, toward the center of town, but Charles kept the fugitives where they were. It seemed to Pernelle a lifetime before he let them up.

  When she finally found the farm track, he let them stop for a moment.

  “There’s enough starlight to ride now, as far as the track goes. Then we’ll find somewhere to rest until dawn.”

  “Why not keep riding while the dark lasts?” Julie objected.

  “Because honest people don’t travel on moonless nights, especially not women.”

  Pernelle mounted Blazon and took Lucie. Charles pulled Julie up behind him on the mare. They rode past vineyards and fields, their passage making little sound on the dirt track. When the track narrowed and began to climb toward rocky hills, Charles led them aside into a stand of scrub oak.

  “We have an hour or two before dawn. We’ll eat now and then sleep a little, until there’s traffic on the road to make us less noticeable.”

  Charles tethered the horses. Then he made a bed of his cloak on the ground for Lucie, and the women brought out bread, olives, and cheese from their small supplies. Charles untied the water flask from his saddle and they ate in exhausted silence. Pernelle had thought she couldn’t possibly close her eyes, but after she’d given some bread and cheese to Lucie, who roused briefly, she lay down beside the child and plunged into sleep.

  When Charles woke her, the sun was still below the hills, but it was full day and hot. They were quickly on their way again. When they reached the Avignon road, he led them placidly onto it, as though they had God’s own time at their disposal to get where they were going, and no one paid the traveling nuns and their Jesuit escort much attention. The long morning was nearly over and Lucie was fussing, wanting down, wh
en drumming hoofbeats and a cloud of dust announced fast-moving riders coming toward them. The hoofbeats could only mean soldiers because this was not a courier route and by law, galloping was not allowed. The other travelers, mostly peasants as laden with baskets and wood as their donkeys, scurried apprehensively off the road. Charles and Pernelle barely had time to rein their horses aside before a half dozen helmeted and armored dragoons were upon them. As the soldiers swept past, Charles sketched a vague blessing on the air. Shifting Lucie’s weight, Pernelle, too, held up a gentle hand. And shot a sharply rude gesture at the soldiers’ backs after they passed. Julie stuffed a handful of her veil into her mouth to stifle a fit of giggles.

  But that was the worst that happened that day or the next. Late on the third day’s morning, they passed the turnoff to Orange—of necessity, they’d traveled slowly because of the child—and slipped into an abandoned vine worker’s cabin on the edge of a deserted vineyard. While Lucie explored every dirty nook and cranny of the derelict cabin’s dirt floor, Pernelle and Julie shed their nuns’ habits and veils and put on their own clothes, becoming a widow in decorous black and her even more plainly dressed maid in unadorned blue. Charles ripped the habits to shreds and buried them behind the cabin. Pernelle and Julie combed out their hair and rebraided it, and then Pernelle covered her hair with a black lace scarf and Julie resumed her little white coif. They set out more bread, cheese, and olives on a cloth on the sun-streaked floor, ate enough to quiet, if not satisfy, their hunger, and started again for Carpentras.

  They reached it in late afternoon, and Charles halted them when they were through the town gate.

  “Before I take you to the Sacred Heart guest house, Pernelle, we’ll go to the Jesuit college. I’ll introduce you to the rector as my mother’s niece. You were visiting her when she took sick. That story is maman’s idea, so if anyone asks, she’ll vouch for you.”