Legacy (28 page)

Marc laughed when she said it. “Don’t worry, I don’t have a single aristocrat in my background. My ancestors were all peasants.”

“Whatever they were, they were courageous people, judging by the book about your parents and grandparents.”

“I think going against the tides is in our nature. That’s very French too. We never want to do what we’re supposed to. It’s much more fun to start a revolution, or be in the resistance. We’re oppositional people, and we never agree with each other either. That’s why we love talking politics here, so we can disagree with everyone.” There were heated debates in cafés constantly, and on campuses, about meaningful
subjects. It was one of the things Brigitte had always liked about France.

They talked all the way to Saint Malo, and it was too late to visit the château when they got there. They checked into the hotel where he had booked rooms for them, and they walked around the port. The town was old-fashioned and pretty. He told her it had been a whaling town long ago, and he entertained her with more stories about the region.

They stopped and bought ice cream, and sat down on a bench to eat it, looking out at the ocean.

“Can you imagine the size of the boat Wachiwi must have come here on?” She looked dreamy when she thought about it. What a brave girl she must have been. And the man she loved and was traveling with had died on the trip. It must have been terrifying for her.

“I don’t want to think about it,” he said. “I get seasick.” He finished his ice cream, and they walked back to the hotel. They each had a tiny room barely bigger than the bed, and they shared a bathroom, but it was cheap. They each paid for their own room. He had offered to pay for hers, and Brigitte wouldn’t let him. He had come here to help her with her research, and there was no reason why he should pay for her. And she didn’t want to be obligated to him.

They ate dinner at a fish restaurant that night since their hotel served no food. The meal was delicious, and he ordered an excellent bottle of inexpensive wine. And dinner with him was lively and interesting. She always had a good time with him. He was so well educated and knew so many things about history, art, literature. She was astounded at his memory for historical facts and dates. He knew more about some aspects of American history than she did. And he
was well informed about politics in the United States too. He was incredibly bright without being pompous, which was rare. So many of the professors she knew in academic life were disconnected from the real world and thought they knew it all. Marc knew a lot but still managed to be humble and make fun of himself. She liked that about him, and he had a good sense of humor. He told her some funny stories about his student days in Boston, and they were laughing when they got back to the hotel, said goodnight, and went to their respective rooms.

She was wearing an old flannel nightgown and brushing her teeth when he walked in on her in the bathroom. She had forgotten to lock the door, and he was wearing boxers and a T-shirt and looked just like any other guy at home. He didn’t look sexy and French, he looked human and real, and she liked that about him. He apologized profusely for walking in, although her nightgown covered her from neck to ankles.

“That’s a sexy-looking gown,” he said, teasing her. “My sister used to have a nightgown like that when we were in school.” He had mentioned her to Brigitte before. She lived in the South of France, was married, and had three kids and he was close to her. He referred to himself as her black sheep brother because he had lived with a woman, never married, nor had kids. She was a lawyer, and her husband was a judge in a small provincial town. “I don’t think she caught her husband by wearing it though,” he continued to tease Brigitte.

“I’m not in the market for a husband tonight,” she quipped back. “I left all my sexy nighties at home.” The truth was that she didn’t
have any, and hadn’t bought sexy lingerie or nightgowns in years. She didn’t need them. She’d had Ted.

“What a pity, I was just about to propose.” He put toothpaste on his brush while he chatted with her, and a minute later, they were both brushing their teeth at the sink. It was a funny thing to be doing with a man she hardly knew, but somehow she didn’t mind. They were becoming real friends, despite his teasing her about relationships and proposals. For them, there was no risk of either one, she was determined to be friends.

When they finished brushing their teeth, he said goodnight, and they went to their rooms and locked the doors. Or she did. He left his unlocked just in case. He would have been perfectly happy if she had become overwhelmed by a tidal wave of lust during the night. Instead, she slept like a baby, and felt fresh in the morning. He expressed his disappointment over it at breakfast, and was teasing her again. In fact, he would have been startled if she had turned up in his room. She had made her boundaries perfectly clear to him, and despite what he said, he respected them, and her. He thought her a very impressive woman, and Ted a fool for having left her. No royal mummy he found in Egypt, or pharaoh’s tomb, would be worth it, in Marc’s opinion. Brigitte was a good woman and brighter than anyone he’d met in a long time.

They drove to the center of town after breakfast, and Marc stopped at the town hall. He had told her that marriages, births, deaths, and whatever had happened in the county were recorded here. It would confirm what she already knew, and perhaps unearth some things she didn’t. And once again, he was right. After paying a
small fee, they spent several hours poring over ledgers. They found the entries for Tristan’s birth and his younger brother’s, and their parents’ births and deaths; both had died relatively young and within days of each other. Marc guessed they had died as a result of some epidemic, and he noted that Tristan had been only eighteen at the time, and his brother ten years younger, so he had inherited the title and everything that went with it when barely more than a boy.

They found the record of the births of Tristan and Wachiwi’s children, the first one named after his late brother. She had seen those names and dates already in the photographic records of the Mormons, but here they were, right where they originally came from. It moved Brigitte to see them in the ledgers. She made notes on everything for her mother, and when they walked into the courtyard afterward, there were young couples with bright expectant faces waiting to be married. Marc explained that in France one had to have a civil wedding before a church one, so all of the young couples there were having their civil ceremonies, and then would marry in church a week or two later. They all looked excited and happy, as Brigitte and Marc walked past them in the courtyard. The various sets of parents were chatting with each other. Brigitte smiled as she walked by, and then she and Marc got back in the car and drove to the château. They had timed their day perfectly. The guided tour was starting in less than an hour. She wanted to hear what they had to say, and to finally see what had once been her family’s château centuries before.

They drove up the same road that Wachiwi had traveled when she got there, to where the château sat on a cliff, looking out to sea. The Château de Margerac was a government-run monument now. They bought two tickets at the entrance to the gardens, and strolled together.
Brigitte was amazed at how enormous it was. It looked like a fortress and had changed very little over hundreds of years. There were still bright flower beds in the garden, a maze, and benches where you could sit and look out at the view. They had no way of knowing that the bench where they sat for a few minutes was the one where Tristan had proposed to Wachiwi. But just being there made Brigitte feel steeped in her own history.

The stables were long empty, and there were a few ancestral portraits but not many, and those had been reclaimed at auction by the Department of Historic Monuments. Brigitte noticed some dusty hunting trophies, as people gathered at the foot of the grand staircase to take the tour, led by a young woman who explained who the Margeracs had been.

She said the château had been built in the twelfth century, and she reeled off a list of names of the generations who had lived there, and what they had done in the community and county. She said that the château was one of the largest in Brittany, and its owners had successfully fought off their enemies in the Middle Ages. And then she explained that that had been the case after the Revolution as well. They were taking the tour in French, and Marc translated for her as the guide spoke quickly, leading them through the master bedroom on the second floor and through several other grand rooms that were empty. They were told that there were bedrooms on the upper floors, as well as the nursery, but they were empty and closed to the public.

And as she finally led them back to the great hall, she announced almost proudly that the Marquis Tristan de Margerac had joined the forces of the resistance, after the Revolution,
les Chouans
, and had succeeded in keeping the château from being taken from them or invaded.
She said that local history showed that he had kept his family sequestered there, despite a fire set in one part of the château by revolutionaries. But the marquis had prevailed and there were local stories that his wife had fought valiantly at his side. Tears sprang to Brigitte’s eyes as she said it. She could easily imagine Wachiwi fighting to defend her home, her family, and her man, a Sioux to the end. The guide said that the château had remained in the family until the mid-nineteenth century, when they had migrated to America. And at the turn of the century, after other owners sold it and it changed hands several times, the Department of Historic Monuments had taken it over and restored it. She said that much of what they saw there was as it had originally been, although in the time that the last generations of marquises had lived there, it had been far more grand. There had been antiques, many of which had disappeared, many servants, extensive lands, all of which had been sold off when the château changed hands. She said the stables had been filled with Thoroughbred horses, and she mentioned that Marquis Tristan de Margerac’s wife had been an exceptional horsewoman of legendary skill in the county. She made a passing comment that she was remarkable in that she was a Native American, believed to be a Sioux, and had come to France to marry him, although she didn’t know the details. She said that her name was Wachiwi, and both she and her husband were buried in the family cemetery behind the thirteenth-century chapel on the estate, where members of the family had been buried for hundreds of years. She added that no direct members of the Margerac family still existed in France. They had all emigrated to America during the nineteenth century and possibly died out.

Marc squeezed her hand when the guide said it, and it made Brigitte want to wave her arms and shout, “Here I am! I’m one of them!” She was still looking deeply moved and vibrant and excited when the tour ended and they walked back outside. She had bought several pamphlets and postcards for her mother, and she looked around feeling a deep tie to her ancestors and their château, and most especially to Wachiwi, who was an inspiration to her now.

She was intrigued to know that Marc had been right. Tristan de Margerac had been a Chouan, and had been able to keep the château, despite the revolutionaries’ attempts to capture it and set it on fire. He had held his ground like others in the region, and Wachiwi had helped him, with all her Sioux fierceness and courage. It must have been a frightening time.

Hearing about it made Brigitte want to write about it, but she still didn’t know how. Fact or fiction? Historical novel? Anthropology? History? Romance? She didn’t know which avenue to pursue, or if she ever would. Maybe it was enough to just know about it, and realize that she was part of it in some way.

She and Marc went down to the small cemetery behind the chapel, although the others didn’t. They had no interest in looking at the headstones and vaults of dead Margeracs for centuries of generations. The chapel was empty when they went inside. One side looked as though it had been damaged by fire long ago, but it was still standing. Brigitte couldn’t help wondering if it was part of the damage done by the revolutionaries or if it had happened later on.

They wandered out into the garden behind it. There were several somber-looking mausoleums, and many headstones, some of which had been worn smooth by time and the names on them lost. Brigitte
knew what she was looking for and what she hoped to find, as Marc followed her into the first two mausoleums, and then a third. All were the names of Margeracs of previous generations, and the carvings of their names were well preserved. They were mostly sixteenth and seventeenth century, and some from the mid- and early 1700s. Tristan and Jean’s parents were there. Brigitte was disappointed to find that Tristan and Wachiwi weren’t, as they walked back outside.

There were two handsome monuments at the back of the cemetery, under a tree, with smaller headstones around them. She had lost hope of finding Tristan and Wachiwi by then, but there was something soothing about reading the names that were her forebears’, and part of the ancestry her mother had been pursuing and chronicling for years.

Marc saw them before she did. He had walked all the way back to the rear of the cemetery to read the names on the last two monuments, and he waved excitedly to Brigitte. She climbed through some tall weeds to get there. The path that meandered through the cemetery was long since overgrown.

He was standing there reverently with tears in his eyes as he silently held out a hand to Brigitte. Their names were clearly marked. They had both died in 1817, within less than three months of each other, twenty-eight years after the revolution, three years after Napoleon’s abdication, and two years after the battle of Waterloo. Wachiwi had died thirty-three years after she had come to France, and thirty-two years after she became the marquise. When they searched through the tall grasses, they found many of the others, her children, their spouses, and two of their children who had died in
France. Still others had gone to the States. So many of the names she had seen recorded recently in ancient ledgers were there, with Tristan and Wachiwi in their midst. Their monuments sat solemnly in the peaceful garden, side by side just as they had lived. Tristan had died at sixty-seven, which had been a considerable age for those times, and it was hard to know how old Wachiwi had been. If she had been around seventeen when she left her village, and eighteen when she married Tristan in that case, then she must have been fifty when she died, and perhaps had died of grief without him, although it wasn’t unusual to die at that age. He was more unusual for having lived much longer. The dates of his birth and death were recorded on Tristan’s tombstone; on hers only the date of her death was inscribed. Probably no one had ever known her precise age—nor had she, since there was no record of her age when she left her tribe, and later fled with Jean.