Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (53 page)

I nodded.

“Amazing,” he said. “I didn’t get any. So you see, I was more careful whom I chose this time, then I traveled safely with the smugglers to Rouen, with a few all the way to Paris, avoiding, with their practiced skill, any committees or troops checking papers; although, to the third question, regarding my head, I do have a Civic Certificate.”

And he reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a slip of paper, which he waved with a flourish, then put back in his pocket.

“How did you—?” I said. “Do you know how hard those are to get?”

“As I wrote to you, I have a lawyer friend in London, James Losh—”

“I didn’t get that letter,” I said.

“Ah,” William said, “well, Losh managed it for me. It took two months for him to request it and have it sent to England from France.

But it seems France welcomes me here now because I work for the Society for Constitutional Reform, and I’m here doing research into the advances the Revolution has made for the world in constitutional government.”

“You mean, that’s what your friend wrote on the form,” I said. “So you’re here under false pretenses.”

“I actually did know a John Frost, here in Paris a year ago,” William said, “who worked for that organization. He wrote favorably about his findings but is in prison now, in England. You see, we have our own Committees of Surveillance.”

“How long is that certificate good for?” I asked.

“As long as I need to conduct my research.”

“You know a Civic Certificate can be revoked on the whim of any representative-on-mission,” I said, “who can claim absolute authority from the Convention itself. Then your next stop is prison and—let me see that certificate.”

“I never let it leave my pocket,” William said. I reached over Caroline toward the inside of his waistcoat, and he held my hand and I shot out the other. Caroline watched in amazement at this sudden and unknown game at the breakfast table, and this time I pulled out the sacred paper, unrolled it, and read it.

“It is true,” I announced. “This is a Civic Certificate with the seal of the mayor of Paris on it. Only it is good
from August 30 to Septem-ber15,
1793. It is now the
twelfth of October
. Monsieur William, this is an invalid document, and traveling with improper papers can be even more dangerous than traveling with none. If you don’t have papers, you may be illegal but not counter-revolutionary; if traveling with false papers, you are immediately seen as an enemy of the Republic, and”—I looked at Claudette—“that is how my brother died.”

“Etienne?” William said, shocked. “I—”

“I wrote to you about it,” I said. “William, how did you avoid anyone checking your papers?”

“I walked, looking, I suppose, like any lone person minding his own business, hid when I saw any troops. One man walking does not excite a lot of attention, and he can easily step behind a hedgerow or—”

“William, you’re foolish. You don’t know what kind of a world we live in.”

“I had to see you,” he said. “After war was declared, I received no mail. I was desperate. What was I to do? All I heard was news of terror coming from France. I had to know if you and Caroline were all right. I had to see you,” he repeated.

“William, you wonderful imbecile,” I said, and I threw the letter back at him, stood up, and placed Caroline alone on the chair. I picked up my plate. “Have you finished?” I asked him.

“This is the first decent meal I have had for weeks,” he said. “I’m going to eat every bite.”

“Caroline and I need to go visit the barn,” said Claudette. “Emilie needs milking, and everybody else needs feeding. And Horace can take anybody’s unfinished portions.” And she picked up my plate from the kitchen and carried it and my daughter out.

“You are an intelligent man,” I said. “I can’t believe you did such a thing.”

“I am sorry about Etienne.”

“He
was trying to get to England.” And I started to cry, standing in the kitchen, and William stood up and put his arms around me.

“I’ll be careful,” he said. “I’ll be very careful.”

“You’re such an imbecile,” I said. “Thank you for being such an imbecile.”

And he took my hand and led me back to the table.

“You received letters?” he said.

“None for months and months, and then suddenly
two
—perhaps because they came from different places, arrived at different ports, than the others. I don’t know. One said you were about to leave to France, and the other that you had almost been killed trying to get here and were, wisely, going to Wales.”

“I did. And my old friend Jones, whom I talked to you of, listened to me endlessly explain my dilemma as we walked among the misty mountains of his country, and when I said simply, I had to try again, he loaned me money and told me Cornwall was the ancient seat of smugglers.”

“William, you’re a criminal in the eyes of two countries.”

“And you? I must tell you, I saw a strange sight. I arrived around dawn, after walking much of the night. Once I had made it to Orléans, and you weren’t there, I had to push on. The cottage was dark. I thought everyone was asleep. I went to rest in the barn—barns have been very helpful to me lately—met Frederick the Great as heretofore mentioned, and, deciding to rest under the eaves, I saw La Rouge ride up—strange, arriving at dawn, but more strange, a blonde lady with your cloak, and a white feather in her hat, dismounted and proceeded to lead Rouge into the barn and open up a hidden stall. This lady had your features and figure, even in the dim light, but I had never seen her before. Do you know where she came from?”

“There are three women, William, whom I will tell you of. You know the first two: the woman who lives for her infant daughter and grows vegetables and fruits for market; another who loves a poet whose country is an enemy to hers, and they must live exiled from each other; and a third, who secretly tries to help others in great need.”

“And what if something should happen to the third woman, in this uncertain world, and she dies and leaves her infant daughter behind her?”

“She has made plans with a very reliable person who also loves the child.”

“Is it worth it?” he said. “And what about that lover in exile?”

“She does not know fully why she undertakes her minor adventures,” I said. “I think she feels she owes it, somehow, that it is a debt of honor.”

“To what?” William said. “To whom?”

“To a little girl she saw once,” I said, “who no longer had any parents, and who was hungry and scared and alone. And, I believe, to the memory of her father and brother.”

William filled his cup from the jug of water and looked at me, as if studying me again.

“For a year I’ve thought of you as the playful person I first met,” he said, “isolated in my memory as you were, untouched by the catastrophic events of the world around you. And all the time you were becoming someone else, someone I could not possibly know because I have not lived as you have lived, in a country at war with itself.”

“I am still Annette,” I said, “your Annette.”

“This other person,” he said. “Does she have a name, too?”

I laughed. “It’s embarrassing. She’s called—the Fearless Chouanne of Blois. I’m not fearless, William—”

“I’ve heard of the Chouans,” he said. “They’re brigands—”

“And where did you hear that from?” I said. “They are the only ones successfully and tirelessly resisting the intrusion of the government of Paris into their lives. I heard a man singing a song they had made up. You might like it; it’s poetry of a sort:

You’ve killed our priests and killed our king,

And stolen our church bell;

You want our men for wars you’ve made—

We say, just go to hell.

“And I thought you hated politics,” William said.

“I do” I insisted. “I hate it more than ever.”

William looked away, ran his hands through his disheveled hair, and said, “I saw it, Annette, when I was in Paris. I saw the Terror. I thought what we heard in England could have been exaggeration. It was not.”

“What did you see?”

“The machine itself.”

I shuddered and tried to push out the picture that suddenly came into my mind of my brother, standing there, or kneeling there. It was rainy September in that picture. I had seen it before. It felt cold now, in the room in the fall morning, with the breakfast fires waning. That machine was always waiting, an invisible presence in the homes and hearts of so many people. “Did you see—?” I said.

“A journalist I knew, Gorsas, I saw him led up to the scaffold, his hands tied behind his back—I had lodged with him in Paris, Annette. I knew him. He wrote for the Girondins, and we argued sometimes over his more extremist positions—but it doesn’t matter now. I heard all my old Girondin friends are on trial. I wanted to go see some of it, but to witness Brissot in his eloquence rip the prosecution’s flimsy case to shreds and have his fine words ignored by a judge who has already made up his mind would be too sad to see. They have actually accused the Girondins of being in league with the prime minister of England! It would be laughable, if it weren’t so tragic. Anybody can say that someone else is ‘not a true patriot,’ and that person is destroyed. That is the real Terror.”

“And here are you,” I said, “with a false Civic Certificate, and think you’re not tempting fate?”

“For a mission such as mine,” he said, “to see you and my daughter—the gods protect such a one.”

“What if you were to climb trees and help a couple of helpless women pick some pears and apples for market this afternoon?” I said.

“Is that noble enough of a mission to merit the protection of those gods?”

“If you are referring to you and Claudette,” he said, “I’ve never known either one of you ever to be helpless, but I’d be happy to harvest some fruit for you. On one condition—that I then get to accompany you to market, and see one of those three women you told me about at her work.”

The rest of that morning William stood perched precariously on various boughs and stretched himself as far as his long arms could reach, risking his life for a single isolated pear or for an impertinent apple that swung just out of his fingers’ touch, until he lunged for it and grasped it, and I shouted up that it
wasn’t worth it
. From below, he was half lost in the leaves and intertwining branches. I could just see his legs and hear his voice from another world. I loved having him working there: my husband and friend and Caroline’s father, as she watched his movements far above her.

That afternoon he accompanied us to market, carrying baskets of ripe pears and apples. He stood beside me at our table now and said we had the best fare at the market, with our fruit and vegetables, goat cheese Claudette had made, and a few rabbits in a makeshift wooden cage. We did well that day, and I smiled at Jeanne Robin, at her table behind us at the opening of an alley behind the square, at the edge of the market.

Then I noticed Citizen Gauchon weaving up to us. I thought he had left to collect church rents throughout the Loire Valley long ago, with Lieutenant Leforges. He looked as if he had been drinking. He still had his red cap and pipe. He came straight to our table.

“Do you have a permit to sell here?” He sounded as if he had been drinking.

“Yes,” I said, “would you like to see it?”

He grunted, and I took the paper from my pocket and unfolded it in front of him. I kept it in my hand. I saw him looking at the seal of the town of Blois on it. Then he looked back at me.

“You look familiar,” he said. “Little baby with you, told everybody in the square that the Holy Tear of Vendôme was real. The real tear of Christ. Are you some kind of idiot or just a counter-revolutionary wench?”

“I think you must have me confused with someone else, Citizen. Excuse us, we must serve our fellow citizens here. You’ve seen our seal. We have a right to be here.”

“What about this one?” and he pointed to William. Now
I
felt like the imbecile. In my bliss at having William with me, I had forgotten that, of course, most of the men his age would have been conscripted.

Benoît was gone now from the count’s service.

“He helped us pick the apples,” I said. “He’s not clever, just tall.”

I didn’t want William to speak and betray his accent.

“Where are you from?” Gauchon said. “Why aren’t you in the army?”

“His mind is slow,” I said. “He can’t follow orders or talk right. The army didn’t want him.”

“The army wants everyone,” said Citizen Gauchon. “Why doesn’t he talk? Hand me your papers,” he said to William.

William unfolded his invalid Civic Certificate in front of Gauchon, as I had done. I could only think of Etienne’s fate with his false papers. Again Gauchon looked at the seal.

“This isn’t proper,” he said.

“Why?” I said.

“This is the seal of Paris. We are in Blois.” Citizen Gauchon was not too drunk to forget the Revolution’s obsession with official seals.

“But this seal allows him to be anywhere in France,” I said. “He just comes from Paris. He travels, picking apples and pears in the fall.”

“Then he must get new certificates from the towns he is in.”

I realized that Gauchon had only looked at the seal. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t see that the dates were wrong and the purpose of doing research on constitutional reform was absurd for someone picking fruit. He only saw that the seal was wrong. But that was bad enough.

“I will have to bring this matter up with the representative-on-mission from Paris,” Gauchon said. “A man must have the seal from the town he is in. Come with me.”

Just then, as he was about to grab William’s upper arm, Gauchon’s bleary eyes left us, and he looked over our shoulders. I followed his gaze to where Jeanne Robin, behind her table but in full view, was squatting down, lifting her skirts and baring her bottom. She seemed to be about to relieve herself.

“Holy mother of God,” said Gauchon, “what a sight,” and he immediately half-stumbled on, in a hurry not to miss the view. Jeanne seemed to be taking her time.

“Leave now, Madame,” Claudette said, “I can take care of the table,” and I lifted up Caroline and hastened William away from the market. If we were lucky, I thought, Gauchon would be too drunk to remember the encounter. If he asked Claudette where we were, she would say the right thing.