Land of Hope

by Paul C R Monk

  Jeanne looked down again at the Palatinate exiles that she had let go ahead. Word had got out that civilians were allowed to get away to the Low Countries. And sure enough, she had observed the crimson-and-blue-uniformed French soldiers letting the leading batch board a previous vessel.

  ‘What do we do now, Mum?’ said Paul, following her gaze. She turned back to him with a smile, a youthful smile. It always melted her heart whenever he called her “Mum” instead of “Mother,” as convention dictated by his breeding. But here in the open countryside, there were no conventions, just the living, breathing, lazy air of burgeoning summer all around them.

  ‘We have a choice,’ she said, tightening her smile. ‘Either we walk to Amsterdam, which means another fifteen days’ trek. Or we risk taking the next boat.’ Jeanne nodded back towards the port below them, where a large rivercraft was coming to moor.

  ‘But there are French soldiers down there,’ he retorted.

  ‘Yes, but they will take us for civilians from the Palatinate. I don’t think they will be much bothered about catching Huguenots.’

  ‘But we can hardly show our papers, can we?’

  ‘Neither can many of those we travelled with. We can say they were lost to fire.’ Then, glancing down at Paul’s feet, she said: ‘Careful of the bees, darling. You don’t want to get stung.’

  *

  The flat-bottomed rivercraft could carry at least fifty passengers, thought Jeanne. So it should be able to carry her, Paul, and the remaining folk waiting at the landing stage, where people from Bingen had provided food and drink.

  They shuffled along with the queue. Jeanne counted five French soldiers controlling the embarkation. Two were barring the access to the gangway so people could pay and board in an orderly manner. They had set up a table behind which one of them was seated. Two more were keeping the queue in order. And another one was servilely assisting with loading bags and young children, and collecting tips. Though the latter had his back to her, his gait seemed strangely familiar. But in the anxiety of the imminent departure, she brushed the notion aside, put it down to nerves or coincidence. For who could she possibly know in the French army?

  The uplifting babble and children’s laughter from the crowd came as an antidote to the gloomy drudgery of the previous days. It was a cheerful interlude, a suspension of sadness, bathed in the comforting warmth of the sun. Psalms were sung in German, adding to the comfort and excitement of the “excursion” into the lowlands, to a new life. But Jeanne knew it would not be just plain sailing and, just as she had experienced before them, these Palatines would soon hit upon the harsh realities of integrating a new culture and language.

  However, living life in the present enabled Jeanne to experience the benefit of these moments of solace. They helped her to keep going, thankful in the knowledge that the river would soon take them away from persecution for good. While standing in the queue, she had observed up front a number of Palatinate women alone with young children, passing without papers. It was confirmation that they would not require a passport as long as they paid the tithe.

  She looked down at Paul, standing brave and ready to play his part. He had inherited her ear for accents, she mused. As he was so young, his brain had worked like a sponge in Schaffhausen, absorbing the new language with his comrades of play, a language of which she had only gained a rudimentary grasp. But at least they looked like any other Palatine traveller; their clothes, though of quality fabric, presented no finery. Paul wore a brimmed hat, and Jeanne had pulled her shawl over her head as had many of the women to hide against unwanted glances and the sun, though gentle it was.

  ‘Der nächste, bitte!’

  The syllables struck like a hammer, flattening her musings as the previous passengers, having paid, advanced up the gangway to board the riverboat.

  She steeled her nerves, threaded her arm through the strap of her knapsack, and advanced with her hand on her son’s shoulder to the landing stage gate. The soldier in a blue frock coat flipped his hand to prompt her to move more quickly. ‘Schnell, schnell!’ he snapped, in the assumption that this lady was a German Palatine like all the rest.

  The other soldier, a young sergeant with a benevolent, moustached face, smiled upon her approach from the camp table behind which he was seated. But it was the older fellow, standing six feet tall with stubble on his chin, who quick-fired the questions in a gruff voice in German.

  ‘For two?’

  Jeanne nodded.

  ‘Where you from?’

  ‘Worms,’ returned the boy in German.

  The balmy-faced soldier noted the information in a logbook open on the table, while the older man told her the price to pay to board. She well knew this was illegal and unethical, but at least it meant these soldiers were more preoccupied with financial gain than with catching Huguenots. A lesser evil, perhaps, that would enable them to move on. She lowered her eyes to conceal her look of scorn as she placed the silver thalers she had previously prepared on the table.

  ‘Papers?’ continued the tall soldier in German. But his question, alarming though it was at first, quickly allayed any anxiety, for it was indeed a question. It was not an order to hand over a passport. Like some of the ladies she had observed before her, she simply shook her head.

  ‘Lost in the fire,’ said Paul in German.

  ‘Can’t she speak for herself?’

  ‘Not since the fire,’ returned the boy.

  The soldier stared at them for an instant, then acknowledged the statement with a curt nod and told them the price for travelling without papers. This, too, was an abuse of power, scornful and illegal. Jeanne nevertheless unshouldered her sack and dug for the extra coin.

  But as she lowered her head, in the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the servile soldier lumbering up the gangway. He was striding back in a syncopated gait to fetch another bag for which the previous family had paid a surcharge. A sudden surge of blood sent her heart pounding as she raised her hand to her mouth. The man had a mutilated thumb.

  She flashed a glance at the other hand, only to see it also had suffered the thumbscrew. She now recognised the laboured gait of Monsieur Crespin. Céphas Crespin, who was also known to her as the pauper. The pauper who had gained her trust with the intent to rob her. The pauper who had abandoned drowning people at the shipwreck on Lake Geneva. The man who had attacked her, beaten her, and left her for dead. What should she do?

  Buying time, with her back to the gangway, she made as if she was scouring her sack. She brought out an empty hand, looked the tall man in the eye, and shook her head. She grabbed her son’s hand and prepared to leave, pressing Paul’s shoulder for him to make haste. But the boy did not need a cue, for he had followed his mother’s look of panic and also had seen the mutilated thumbs of Crespin.

  ‘Hey, lady!’ called out the balmy-faced sergeant. He pushed away from the camp table and hopped round to intercept her. ‘Where you going?’ he continued in French. Jeanne did not answer. Instead, she gave a curt shake of the head and continued onwards, back towards the queue.

  The tall man by now had stepped over to translate into German. The sergeant affably insisted, ‘Tell her she can pay in food, sausage, or whatever takes her fancy.’

  Taking care to at least let the translation begin, she shook her head resolutely.

  The boy looked up at the soldiers with purpose. ‘We will see later,’ he said.

  ‘In that case,’ said the sergeant to his subordinate, ‘tell her she can take back her fare. We are not thieves, are we, lads?’

  ‘What’s up?’ called out an oily, smiling voice before the translator could finish. ‘Little lady got cold feet, has she?’

  Jeanne recognised the all-too-familiar voice of Céphas Crespin, and he was lumbering up towards her.

  She dared not turn around. Keeping one hand on Paul’s shoulder in front of her, she pulled her shawl more tightly around her bust and head with the other hand.

  ‘Where she from?’ said Céphas
Crespin, now standing between the table and the remaining queue of a dozen people.

  ‘Worms,’ said the translator.

  At that moment, Jeanne felt a hand claw the top of her shawl and rip it from over her head to reveal her swan-like neck and her fine brown hair tied up in a chignon.

  They might have been able to outrun the decrepit pauper, but there was no chance of escaping these young men, who were now joined by one of the troopers previously positioned to watch the queue.

  She swung round. Her hairpin fell out and let tumble her miniature Bible. But it was no big deal; here, everyone was a Protestant. The soldiers let it lie where it was.

  Jeanne looked Crespin squarely in the eyes. He had a full beard now that covered half his face, which explained why she had not made the connection on seeing him from a distance. She recognised his pockmarked cheeks all right, though, and the snarl on his upper lip as he smiled at her vacantly, without emotion or recognition.

  ‘Can’t pay the surcharge,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Where she say she’s from?’ said Crespin, who was by far the oldest of the soldiers.

  ‘Can’t talk, but the boy says they’re from Worms,’ said the tall translator.

  Céphas Crespin turned back to the lady. He then smiled his deliberate fawning smile of old, the smile he had perfected to gain her trust when carrying fabrics for her at the church in Geneva. Now it only filled her with disgust and scorn. And she loathed him all the more for pretending to give her hope that he had somehow not recognised her.

  ‘’Course she ain’t paid,’ said Crespin, keeping his eyes dotingly fixed upon her. ‘She’s a rotten, stingy Hugo!’

  With a self-satisfied smile, he bent down to retrieve her miniature Bible, while the sergeant gave the nod to his subordinates to arrest her.

  But Jeanne’s hatred of this man bending down at her feet was all-consuming—this man who would have slit her son’s throat for a bagful of booty. She was oblivious now to the men attending her as she screamed out, ‘You evil wretch! You evil, obnoxious wretch!’

  Slipping her arms free from the soldiers’ hold, and mustering all her might, she delivered her boot into the pauper’s smarmy face, into the scoundrel who would rather loot dead bodies than attempt to save drowning people. As he rose up, cupping his nose, she then kicked him between the legs. And again she kicked him as he staggered in agony until the soldiers, hampered by the boy and protestations of injustice from some of the exiles, at last managed to pin back her flailing arms and drag her away.

  *

  An hour after the riverboat had departed, Jeanne and the boy arrived by packhorse at a field encampment.

  After enquiry, the sergeant was directed to the top of the camp, where the commander was inspecting the field guns. Young Sergeant David suddenly realised how ridiculous he and his crew must seem, escorting a woman and a boy. Camp followers looked on with amusement amid catcalls and hoots from soldiers cleaning their arms and playing dominoes. The escort seemed excessive. It reminded him of a time when he was out hunting for game one day and found himself with five other huntsmen, beating about a single bush to get a pheasant to come out and take flight. But he could hardly double back now.

  He was beginning to loathe Crespin’s influence, the easy coin made by cashing in on the exiles’ desperation, and now the arrest of a Huguenot lady on foreign turf. It was not as if they could put her in prison. What would they do with her?

  It gave Jeanne no joy either to hear the softer consonants and vowel sounds of her mother tongue as she marched along the alley of bivouacs, where soldiers and their ladies eyed her speculatively. How could her journey of escape end here after so much hardship? Paul would be taken from her. He would be brought up by Jesuits, who would end up hammering their dogma into his skull until they had cracked it like a nut. He would be broken, brought up to fight for the king, and die a young man on one of his battlefields.

  The commander was in discussion with his artillery man where the field camp met a meadow of long grass and wild flowers. Sergeant David approached with his cortège. It comprised three soldiers, a corporal with a bloodstained nose, a young boy, and a fine-looking lady of noble carriage. The commander’s curiosity was piqued enough for him to suspend his conversation. With a flourish of the hand, he granted permission for the young sergeant to speak.

  ‘Monsieur le Marquis de Boufflers, Sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘We encountered no enemy, the only encounter being of a religious nature more than anything else, Sir.’ Sergeant David then glanced over his shoulder to where Jeanne had been told to halt with the boy. They were flanked by two soldiers on either side.

  With his foot on the carriage wheel of a twelve-pounder, de Boufflers placed an elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist. But before he could respond, the corporal with the blood-splashed nose stepped forward from the right flank of the female prisoner. ‘Permission to speak, Sir,’ said Corporal Crespin eagerly. He was not going to let this squirt of a sergeant fifteen years his junior get all the credit. ‘I recognised the lady from my surveillance days in Geneva, Sir.’

  ‘That is true, Sir,’ said Sergeant David generously. ‘There would have been no call to arrest her otherwise.’

  ‘She is a Huguenot,’ added Crespin, in case the allusion had escaped the marquis. He handed him the miniature Bible in support of his statement.

  ‘Name?’ said de Boufflers.

  ‘Delpech, Sir,’ said Crespin, ‘Jeanne Delpech.’

  ‘Countess Delpech de Castanet,’ corrected the lady, standing erect. Inside, however, she was submerged in mixed emotions of fear and fury. For she realised she was standing before the very man who had caused the loss of her social position, the death of her child, the imprisonment of her husband, and the estrangement of her baby and eldest daughter.

  She recalled her sister relating to her how he looked when he had first entered her hometown of Montauban. He had shown then, too, the characteristic arrogance and nonchalant flick of the wrist that pertained to the generation bred in the manners of Versailles.

  ‘Where are you from, Madame?’ he said in a polite fashion.

  Jeanne stood proud but speechless before the architect of her sufferance.

  ‘Come, speak up, Madame, we have not got all day!’

  But still she stood tongue-tied. Then she felt a hand clasp the bun of her chignon, and heard the voice of Crespin. ‘You’ve been asked a question —owww!’ The last word was punctuated by a sudden cry of pain as the boy placed his boot in the shin of his mother’s aggressor. The pauper turned and clobbered the lad, who promptly fell to the ground.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ said Jeanne, who was held at either elbow by the soldiers who flanked her. She shook herself free, then reached for the boy, who had picked himself up off the floor and was rubbing his cheek.

  ‘Where are you from, Madame?’ said the marquis more firmly, which made everyone remember their places.

  ‘I am from Montauban,’ said Jeanne, at last, having released her vocal inhibition. ‘A place you know well, Sir.’

  ‘Indeed, Madame. Wonderful town, too hot in the summer, though. But the people are understanding and most welcoming!’

  Jeanne no longer saw the illustrious commander in uniform, but a churl being ironic in the most callous and unchristian way. She was suddenly inhabited by a rush of fury.

  ‘You, you scoundrel!’ she said. ‘You take yourself for an honourable gentleman, but you, Sir, are no more a gentleman than this leech here!’ She gave a flick of the head towards Corporal Crespin on her right and persisted, narrowing her eyes, in restrained wrath. ‘You have ruined my family, invaded my home, taken my children, and sent my husband across the world. In the name of what saint or devil, I ask you!’

  ‘In the name of political and religious unity, Madame,’ said de Boufflers, quick to follow up and removing his foot from the carriage.

  ‘I am a Christian, Sir, and I am French!’

  ‘But you are a Huguenot, Madame!’

>   ‘And proud to be so, Sir, like all the Protestants of this land. And know, Sir, you will never break my spirit; you will not break that of my son either. I would rather die and face my Lord and judge!’ She felt herself succumbing to her anger, sliding dangerously out of control. So, standing firm, she shut her mouth, not because de Boufflers had held up a hand as if to stop an onslaught, but because she knew she must find a valid reason for this man of war and strategy not to send her back to France. He would be more irritated than moved by an appeal founded on emotion alone.

  ‘That may be so, Madame,’ he said with superior calmness. ‘However, as you can imagine, I have other preoccupations than self-righteous Huguenots to think about . . .’ He made a discreet gesture to encompass the line of cannons parked on the edge of the field camp.

  ‘Then let us go,’ said Jeanne levelly. ‘You cannot take me back to France! Moreover, this is not French soil. You have no right to hold me here!’

  ‘Sir,’ said Crespin, slipping in with his insistent, droning tone, feeling that his revenge was slipping from his grasp. ‘Shall I put them somewhere, Sir?’

  ‘What, and mobilise three soldiers, Corporal?’ said de Boufflers.

  He was in a lethargic mood that afternoon. And he was weary of the scorched earth campaign, fatigued by the company of soldiers. He turned his head away towards the meadow of long grass and wild flowers, bathed in late-afternoon sunshine.

  Although this lady did not look particularly fashionable in her modest garb, she did have breeding. She had character, too, and he liked a lady with character. It was what had attracted him to Madame de Maintenon. The lady was right; this was not officially French soil . . . at least, not yet. He could not argue with that.

  He turned back to her. ‘Countess . . .’ he said with a nod, and tossed her Bible to her. But to everyone’s astonishment, she visibly took this as a cue to leave. She grabbed the boy’s hand and stomped clean off into the meadow.

  ‘Sir? What shall I do?’ said a baffled Sergeant David.

  De Boufflers was gazing wordlessly across the meadow where the sunlight was lending the long grass a golden tinge, as the lady and the boy made a trail through it. Delpech. He had heard the name before; now he remembered. Delpech, of course, the merchant gentleman who would not renounce his faith, and neither could he shut his mouth for the life of him. He had sent the man packing to God knew where and used the little family as an example to those who might be tempted to convert back. And for all intents and purposes, it had been a success. At least, it had done the job during his appointment as colonel-general of the dragonnades. Anything else no longer mattered, for unity had been forged in France.