by Rock, Judith
“But if she’s supposed to be so ill, aren’t you back too soon from her bedside? Won’t the rector suspect something?”
“He’ll be piously glad to hear that the doctor was mistaken, it wasn’t plague, and that my mother is recovering. And that she sent me back quickly to take up my duties again. I’ll give him her ‘message,’ including her hopes that he’ll help you find a party to join as you travel toward home and will vouch for your character. Your ‘home,’ of course, is the French side of the Swiss border. For good measure, I’ll tell him you’ve been visiting shrines of the Madonna.”
Pernelle was tired and hot, and her temper flared. “I know nothing about your shrines.” Her voice rose. “I cannot—”
Charles leaned from his saddle and clamped a hand on her arm. “You can,” he said softly. “And we are in the public street.” He smiled dangerously and let go of her.
She returned his smile, equally dangerously, and they rode on. But the fight went out of her as she looked down at Lucie, fretful and restless on her saddle bow. No doubt the Madonna had worried even more about her son than she worried about Lucie. Remembering that might make acting this charade easier.
But by the next morning, acting the charade was anything but easy. Lucie’s exhausted crying and their own weariness had let them all go early to bed in their tiny guest room. They’d avoided the evening office of Compline, but Pernelle saw no way out of morning Mass. She gave Julie the excuse of looking after Lucie and went to the convent chapel alone. Having lived all her life with Catholic relatives and neighbors, she knew enough about the Mass’s ritual to get through it. She kept her head bowed and silently prayed her own prayers, kneeling and rising as the nuns did in the choir. But after Mass, one of the sisters stopped her in the courtyard.
“Why did your maid not come to Mass? Is she ill?”
“She is taking care of my little girl. Lucie is very restless after all our traveling, and it’s hard just now to keep her still.”
The nun’s smile was admonishing. “We don’t mind a little crying.”
“You are very kind.” Pernelle smiled back, took her leave, and went in search of Julie.
She found her playing with Lucie in the part of the convent garden open to guests. “Come back to the room, Julie. We must talk.”
When they were safely alone, and the loudly protesting Lucie had been pacified with the wooden lamb David had carved for her, Pernelle said, “They’re already asking why you don’t come to worship, Julie. You have to come to Mass. And some of the offices.”
“No.” Julie crossed her arms and sat down on the bed, her blue eyes coldly stubborn.
“Yes. How you feel about it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but getting safely through this.”
“That’s heresy, Pernelle! How can I go into their church and worship idols? False images, statues!” Julie’s voice rose. “How can I cross myself and do all those things the Bible doesn’t tell us to do—it’s sin! The Catholic church is the Whore of Babylon, our preachers say so!”
“Hush, they’ll hear you!” Two steps brought Pernelle eye to eye with the girl. “Listen to me. If you want to be a martyr, go do it somewhere else. If we’re exposed as Huguenots, it will be obvious that we’re trying to get out of France. We’ll be arrested, and whatever happens to you and me, Lucie will be taken away and given to Catholics to raise. I’ll never see her again. I don’t care how many sins we commit to prevent that. We are all going to Compline after supper. We are all going to Mass in the morning. When we get to Geneva, you can denounce me to the whole city. Until then, you are going to do as I say. Unless you want me to leave you to make your own way to Switzerland.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Never think there’s anything I wouldn’t do to protect Lucie. Now take her back to the garden and think about what I’ve said.”
Julie snatched up Lucie and left in furious silence. Pernelle sank onto the bed and covered her face with her hands, praying for a miracle, a safe way to the border.
When the bell rang for Nones, she went doggedly back to the bosom of the Whore of Babylon. But to Pernelle’s surprise, the nuns’ Latin chanting calmed her. Though she had no illusions about what would happen if they discovered what she really was. As she listened to the singing, her gaze rested on the statue of Mary and the Child. Mary had failed to keep her child from terrible suffering, as she herself might fail to protect Lucie. There were hundreds of miles between this place and Geneva. Send me a miracle, she prayed silently.
The miracle happened the next day. Just before midday dinner, an elderly woman arrived at the guest house in a rumbling carriage. They met her at table. She was a large, convivial soul with unruly gray hair escaping her limp linen-and-lace headdress. At table, the woman beamed fondly at Lucie and glanced sympathetically at Pernelle’s black bodice and skirt and the black scarf over her hair.
“I see, my dear young madame, that you, too, are widowed.”
Pernelle murmured that she was and mentally reviewed the story Charles had given her. But the woman saved her the trouble of any further answer.
“Widowed twenty years now, I am.” She looked sideways at Pernelle. “He was a good enough man and a good enough husband. And I was a sad enough widow as long as I needed to be. I was lucky enough, of course, to be already too old for giving another man children, so my family left me alone to go on being a widow. I’m seventy now, you know. And I always say that one of the best things about losing a husband is that you can travel, if you have the wish and the means. Praise to the bon Dieu, my good enough man left me with more than enough means. And I already had the wish when I wasn’t much older than your little one. How old is she and what’s her name?”
“Her name is Lucie, madame, and she’ll soon be three.”
“A beautiful child.” The woman smiled across the table, where Lucie was shaking her head emphatically at the spoonful of lamb and carrot stew Julie was trying to feed her. “And willful with it. Good. I like to see that in a girl. She’ll travel, too, some day, you mark my words.” Seeing Julie’s scandalized look, the woman snorted with laughter. “You, now,” she said, her eyes dancing with mischief, “I think you’ll stay at home all your life.”
“I am traveling now, madame,” Julie said coldly, and turned her attention back to Lucie.
“Ah. A good answer. You may go farther than I thought.” She leaned toward Pernelle. “And where are you going, if I may ask? Perhaps, as I have done, you are making a pilgrimage to Our Lady’s shrines hereabouts?”
Pernelle began to shake her head and then corrected herself. “To one or two. The Black Madonna at Conques, for one. But now we are on our way home. May I ask your name, madame?”
“Ah, there I go, or rather, there I went again, talking so much and forgetting common courtesy. I pray you excuse me. I am Madame Catherine de Vouvray. I, too, am returning home, a long journey, all the way to Chastillon.”
Julie’s head came up. “Is that near Chalex, madame? Chalex on the border, I mean?” She looked at Pernelle.
“Near enough. Blessed saints, I wish this journey might be as short as a walk from Chastillon to Chalex. Being in that carriage for days is like being in a boat, which my stomach abhors. And to make it all last longer, the carriage always breaks down. But the journey does end, like most things in life, and then I am home.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Julie kept on wiping at a spot on Lucie’s chin until Lucie squirmed and tried to pull the big linen napkin away. Pernelle toyed with her stew, her mouth suddenly too dry for swallowing.
Taking a sip of wine, she said, “Forgive me, madame, I have not introduced myself, either. I am Madame Charlotte Fontenoy. That is my maid Jeanne. And it so happens that we are traveling to meet my sister near Chalex.”
Mme Vouvray’s face lit with interest. “Are you, now? And does your carriage also break
down? If my coachmen did not carry spare wheels, we would never get anywhere; the roads are a shame to France!”
“They are. But no, I have no carriage. My husband left me not very well off. That is why I am going to meet my sister. She has agreed to give us a home.”
Madame de Vouvray frowned. “Who is she visiting in Chalex? There are few people of quality there. Only the Comte de Berne, and he is rarely at home. He does have a brother, though, who uses the house. Is it him she visits?”
“No, she is visiting a cousin. A girl who, I fear, married beneath her,” Pernelle said repressively, hoping to put a stop to questions.
Mme de Vouvray was obviously on the point of pursuing Pernelle through her imagined family tree, but Lucie stood up in Julie’s lap and, before anyone could stop her, crawled onto the table. She made straight for the old woman, plopped into her lap with a heart-melting smile, and began telling her all about the birds in the garden. “Well! Saint Mary of the Angels, little one! What prompted this?”
Silently giving thanks for Lucie’s diversion, Pernelle poured out apologies while Julie ran around the table to take Lucie back. But Mme de Vouvray waved them away.
“No child has ever done that with me, I never was blessed with children. How sweet she is, with her curls and those great black eyes.” The old woman looked across the table at Pernelle. “Since you have no carriage, madame, will you allow me to offer you mine? It is a great rumbling thing with room for all of us. And when we reach Chastillon, we will get you on to Chalex.”
Julie caught her breath and clasped her hands to her breast, her face shining with hope.
“Oh! That is—you are very kind, madame,” Pernelle managed to say, unable to keep her voice steady. She glanced at Julie. “That is miraculously kind. But we have a horse,” she added hesitantly.
“My men can take it on a leading rein.”
“If you are certain—if it would not be too much trouble.”
Madame de Vouvray looked down at Lucie, who was happily examining the gold crucifix lying on the shelf of her violet silk bodice. She soundly kissed the top of Lucie’s head. “I get horribly lonely in that carriage.”
The next morning, soon after dawn, Pernelle was leaning from the window of Mme de Vouvray’s heavy, old-fashioned coach as the six sturdy horses leaned into their harness and the wooden wheels began to roll.
“Good-bye, Charles. God be with you. Good-bye—” From the circle of her arm, Lucie waved both hands and jumped up and down in her lap.
Alone beside the convent gate, Charles lifted a long arm and waved back. Pernelle could see that he was no longer smiling. They had talked briefly in the convent garden, telling each other how unlikely it was that they would meet again and wishing each other well. Pernelle had longed to put her arms around him and had known from the brusqueness of his turning away that he shared that longing. Pretending not to see each other’s eyes shining with unshed tears, they had walked together to the coach, where Julie was trying to keep Lucie away from the horses while she waited with Mme de Vouvray. Charles had kissed the little girl, said good-bye to Julie, and helped Pernelle up the carriage step. A lackey had folded the step away and closed the door.
Now, the lumbering coach was slowly gathering speed, surrounded by four armed and liveried outriders, one of them with Pernelle’s Blazon on a leading rein. Through the growing cloud of dust thrown up by wheels and hooves, Pernelle watched Charles grow smaller in the distance. If she and Charles hadn’t been parted by their families, he wouldn’t have become a soldier. If he hadn’t been a soldier, he wouldn’t be a Jesuit, because soldiering was what had led him to the Society of Jesus. If they hadn’t been parted, she wouldn’t have married David and she wouldn’t have Lucie. So she and Charles had lost each other, but their paths had brought them both to love. Not the love they’d first chosen—but then, who could say for certain where choice began and ended in a life?
The coach rocked around a curve in the road and Charles disappeared. Pernelle drew back from the window, put up the glass against the dust, and turned her thoughts to the road ahead.
Chapter 4
The traveling days passed slowly, in clouds of dust and tedium. The women stayed in the best of whatever inns and convent guest houses they could find, often fighting fleas at night and feeling ill from questionable food by day. Mme de Vouvray was unfailingly kind and a godsend for her patience in amusing Lucie. But her ceaseless chatter nearly sent Pernelle shrieking from the coach. Julie, in one of her sudden changes of mood, chattered happily back. By the time the road—such as it was—began to rise toward the mountains, Pernelle felt she would be an old woman before they reached Chastillon and Mme de Vouvray’s house. She also wished she could get out and walk, because the ruts and rocks and the coach’s bouncing grew steadily worse and she was already bone sore from the jolting travel. A few days to recover from the trip after we get to Chastillon, she told herself, a few days for Lucie to have some freedom to run and play, and then they would press on alone to the border.
But when they reached Chastillon, Lucie fell ill. At first Pernelle thought she was only tired from all the traveling, but the tiredness turned into coughing, and then fever, and the child was in bed for over a week. And though Mme de Vouvray fussed over her nearly as much as Pernelle and Julie did, she was slow getting her strength back. When Pernelle judged Lucie finally well enough to travel, she went to tell madame that they would be leaving in the morning. But Mme de Vouvray was too full of her own news to listen. She was leaning from the window in her upstairs salon, listening to a cackle of voices rising from the street.
“Thank the Blessed Virgin!” she called back in answer, and looked over her shoulder at Pernelle. Her faded blue eyes were shining with excitement. “Have you heard? They’ve caught more of them!”
Something in her voice turned Pernelle cold with sudden fear. “Caught who, madame?”
“Huguenots!” The woman turned back to the window.
“Oh?” Pernelle turned to a side table and picked up an almanac to have a reason for somewhat hiding her face. “Where did they catch them?”
“At the nearest stretch of border. The troop—” Galloping hooves drowned her voice for a moment. “Ah, there go more soldiers! The troop of soldiers that rides the border got the heretics trying to cross the stream. Well, they bring it on themselves, don’t they? If they scorn God’s church, they must take the consequences.” She drew back into the room and sat down in her chair by the window. “We’ve even caught them here in the village—the cowherd found three in a byre one morning last January! Can you imagine?”
“I can.” Pernelle put the book down and went to the other window, unable to look at this generous woman full of happy excitement over the downfall of people like herself and her family. And now she and Lucie and Julie would have to stay longer here in Chastillon. The soldiers would keep close watch along this part of the border until they were sure all the Huguenot band had been caught. Which meant finding a reason to stay until they turned their attention elsewhere.
“Madame?” The woman rose from her chair and came to stand beside Pernelle. “You seem worried. Is Lucie worse again?”
Pernelle made herself smile. “No, she is better. But—”
“Praise all the saints for that! But you must not think of taking her out onto the roads again yet. It’s very little distance to the village of Chalex, but still, you must not be in a hurry.” She sighed and her fat wrinkled face looked suddenly years older. “I know. I had four of my own, a boy and three little girls, and lost them all before they were ten years old.”
Pernelle felt a rush of sympathy for this kind and guileless enemy. “I know, too, madame. I lost two babies. Would you like to come and see Lucie before she goes to sleep again?”
The old woman followed her to the guest chamber, where Lucie was sitting in the middle of the big, crimson-curt
ained bed, sucking her thumb, and Julie was sitting on a stool in a shaft of sunlight mending a skirt. Mme de Vouvray sat heavily on the bed’s edge and started a clapping game with Lucie, singing a song about foxes and chickens that produced torrents of laughter from both of them. Pernelle watched, wondering how it was that people could be such a bewildering weave of kindness and cruelty. Please God, she prayed, let the soldiers move quickly on.
But it took days for the soldiers to leave, and just as word spread that they’d gone, it began to rain. And went on raining for four days, veiling the mountains in clouds and fog, turning the roads to muddy streams, and making Pernelle think she would go mad before it stopped.
But finally, the sun came back and shone steadily, and the roads began to dry. Pernelle and Julie bade a firm farewell to Mme de Vouvray. Who, Pernelle thought, would happily have kept Lucie with her forever. And kept her and Julie, too, as the price of keeping the child. In her anxious care for all three, Mme de Vouvray insisted on sending a manservant to see them safely along the day’s slow journey to Chalex, the village where they were supposedly meeting Pernelle’s nonexistent sister at the house of a nonexistent cousin.
“How are we going to get rid of him?” Julie whispered frantically as they put on their cloaks in the guest chamber.
“I have no idea. I could strangle the dear woman. Pray. That’s all I can think of.”
They set out, Mme de Vouvray waving from her gate, Pernelle on Blazon with Lucie in front of her, Julie riding pillion behind the manservant. Before they’d gone a mile, Pernelle’s exasperated desire to do away with their hostess’s unwanted aid had grown like a biblical mustard seed. The man, a groom they’d hardly seen before, talked more than any three women and was as insatiably curious as a child. He had surely been better trained than that, but away from his mistress’s eye—and ear—it was, “Where are you ladies going? Only to Chalex, or farther? It’s a sad little excuse for a place, much better stay in Chastillon, where things are happening. And where have you come from? Did you hear about those heretics the soldiers got? I’d dearly like to see a good hanging of them. Or better yet, a burning. Ruining France, I say, and so our blessed king said finally, and now everyone knows them for the outlaws they are! Lucky you have me to protect you if we come on any of them, and they’re around, make no mistake.”