The King's Daughter (3 page)

“He murmured, ‘so, you search for happiness in dreams, too.' Then he didn't say anything more until we reached the house. Grandfather was on the doorstep. He was worried because night was falling. He recognized my saviour and frowned. Thierry greeted him courteously and, holding me by the wrists, helped me get down. Grandfather caught me in his arms.

“Thierry was very ill at ease and embarrassed. He took a silver coin from his pocket and offered it to me.

“‘that's to replace your skirt I had to cut with my knife.'

“Not knowing what to do, I accepted the coin. Grandfather took it away from me and threw it at him, saying, ‘the Chatels don't need charity from their more fortunate neighbours.'

“Thierry went red in the face. He turned his horse and left at a gallop, whistling for his dogs. I didn't see him again for two years.”

“But you didn't forget him, did you?”

You'd think such a crime would have been inexcusable.

“Of course I thought of him every time I went through the hole in the wall and picked ‘his' apples and ‘his' nuts. And when I climbed up the old oak, I wondered which turret of the chateau his room was in.”

“In the highest one, for sure,” Geneviève stated with conviction.

3

AFTER A LONG
silence in which each girl dreamed of her personal version of the adventure, Jeanne continued in a barely audible voice, for this part of the story still pained her, even after eight years.

“One evening, some time before Christmas, when I was ten years old, Grandfather came back from the forest, very pale and ill. The game wardens had chased him for a long time and he had had to run very fast. He lay down on his bench near the hearth and asked me to put a lot of logs on the fire. He was shivering. He slept a little, and later he asked me to light all the candles we owned. That surprised me, since we were always very sparing with light. Now I know Grandfather didn't want me to be afraid of death, all alone in the darkness. I thought it was a celebration. It was warm and bright in our house as never before.”

Marie, Anne and Geneviève pictured an attractive, rustic cottage. Never had Jeanne been able to reconcile herself to giving a faithful description of the charred ruin that had been the centre of her happiness. Her friends couldn't see with her eyes that immense, desolate room, where tattered tapestries disguised the very tall windows with their permanently closed shutters. Candlelight flickered on the blackened beams of the ceiling, lending a sinister air to the only ancestral portrait to survive the disaster. The few remaining pieces of furniture and the bookshelves had been arranged around the fireplace, leaving the rest of the room empty but for the echoing footsteps. All of Jeanne Chatel's world was contained in those ten square feet of light and warmth.

“Then, calmly, as if he were telling me a story, Grandfather prepared me for his death. He had me lift a hearthstone; underneath it was a gold chain with a medal of the Virgin. In a new voice, very soft and slow, he said to me as he put the chain around my neck, ‘tomorrow you will go and take this jewel to the priest, and you will tell him I want to be laid to rest with my ancestors in the cemetery. The medal will pay the cost of a service and everything else. Then you will go to Troyes and you will tell Madame de Chablais, the Mother Superior of the Congregation, that you are my granddaughter. I knew her well at one time. She will take you in.'

“It all seemed so easy and natural that I didn't think of being frightened. I thought it was one of Grandfather's new stories, and since he seemed tired, I didn't want to bother him with my objections. Tomorrow he would be better and would forget all that.

“Then he told me death was a rest in a garden of dreams. There you would find all those you had loved in life, even the dogs that had been your faithful friends. He promised me he would wait for me peacefully, smoking his pipe, setting his snares and fishing for trout in the forests of paradise. Then he told me, ‘Go to bed, my darling. Tonight it's too cold to go poaching. Go to sleep. I am going to have a rest, and tomorrow you will remember my advice.'

“He kissed me on the forehead as he did every evening. I found it strange to sleep with all that light, but it was just those unexpected fancies that made life with my grandfather charming.

“I woke up very early because the fire had gone out. All the candles had burned their wicks right down. It was dark and I knew Grandfather was dead.”

The three friends cried openly over this story. Though it had been repeated a hundred times, it was still moving. Jeanne envied them their soothing tears. Never had she been able to cry over this memory, perhaps because Honoré Chatel had succeeded so well in his mission to soften his death for his granddaughter.

In her even voice, Jeanne continued her story. “The priest accepted the medal. Women I didn't know forced me to wear black clothing that was too big for me. They didn't want me to enter the church where the service was taking place. They made me stay in one of their houses, in a dusty sitting room where they recited the rosary. I was certain that wasn't what Grandfather would have wanted. So I ran away.”

“Where, Jeanne? Where could you go in the winter when you were ten?”

There was but one refuge, all four knew, but they had to ask the ritual questions.

“I fled to the Villebrand estate, through the hole in the wall, and I climbed up the oak, higher than ever. From there I saw them put Grandfather in a hole in the cemetery. Then they returned to their houses.

“Later they started searching for me. They ran to our house, towards the town, along the paths, calling me and promising me good things to eat.

“I was cold and hungry, but I knew that if I came down, they would shut me up in a convent. I preferred to die in my tree.”

Do we need novels, Geneviève, Anne and Marie wondered, when we live with a real heroine?

Jeanne pictured herself again, huddled on a branch, paralyzed, her mind empty, oblivious to the weather and the cold, waiting, waiting.

The silence wore on. Anne took up the thread of the story again. “Then Thierry arrived on his big white horse.”

“Yes. He had come from Paris to spend Christmas with his family. I saw him in the distance talking to the villagers who were pointing towards our house and waving their arms.

“Some time later, he stopped his horse at the foot of the oak and started to climb up to me through the branches. He said softly, ‘I knew you'd be here in your chateau. Come down now. The time for dreams is over. Come, my poor little bird.'

“I was so frozen that my hands couldn't grip the branches. He carried me in his arms down to the foot of the tree.”

“He was strong,” said Anne dreamily.

“I wasn't heavy and I was only ten years old. He was already a man, very tall and strong.”

The listeners were always being brutally brought back to reality. This romance existed only in their minds. The heroine was but a child.

“And he took you to the convent?”

“He was heading for Troyes, holding me firmly in front of him on his horse. I felt reassured. Suddenly I came back to my senses. I had to escape or be in prison for life.”

“All the same, Jeanne, the convent isn't so terrible.”

“I know now. At that time, it seemed like a fate worse than death. I decided to run away. I still had the bag of mustard powder I had been carrying around in vain all those years. I slipped my hand into my pocket and carefully stuck my fingers in the powder. I had taken a long time to decide and we were approaching the first houses in the town.”

“And you did it? You dared to blind your benefactor?”

“In my eyes he wasn't my benefactor. I think I'd become a little mad from grief and fatigue. I turned around and, sharply, I threw the mustard in his face.”

Sitting on their beds, Anne, Geneviève and Marie shuddered as they relived that heroic scene.

“You did dare, Jeanne, that's terrible. Was he furious?”

“He cried out and put his hands to his eyes. I was about to jump when he caught me by the shoulder and growled between clenched teeth, ‘Silly little fool. You won't get away from me.'

“He didn't let me go. He threw back his head while tears ran from his reddened, closed eyes. He tried to rub his eyelids with his free hand. I felt him shaking against me. He took out his handkerchief, just like the one he'd given me the other time, and held it out to me with a trembling hand.

“‘Quick, wet it with the water in my flask.' I emptied the water onto the handkerchief, then right onto his upturned face. He shook his head and clenched his teeth. He held the handkerchief up to his eyes and groped for the reins. The horse had come to a stop.

“I put them into his hand and he dug his heels into his mount. In a gasp he said, ‘take me to the convent. I can't see anything. You burned my eyes!'

“I was terrified. I don't remember how we reached the convent.

“In front of the congregation gate I said to him, ‘Here it is.' I'd already been by there with Grandfather, and he'd pointed out the windows with their opaque glass and the high, thick wall.

“Thierry let me slide to the ground, still holding me by the wrist. He had never once released me the entire time. He, too, jumped down blindly. He was holding the handkerchief to his eyes and staggering. I pulled him by the arm towards the front door. I rang, rang with all my might. When the nuns arrived, Thierry was kneeling on the ground, half unconscious. They carried him into the convent.

“‘What happened to you?' someone asked.

“‘It was an accident,' he murmured. ‘I got something in my eye.' He didn't betray me, and they forgot all about me. I hid in a corner. Afterward I learned from Mother de Chablais that he never accused me. No one understood what had happened to him. They called Monseigneur de Villebrand from the archbishop's palace. He took his nephew to his house and they looked after him. After a few days he was cured, so they said, and he went back to Paris.

“During that time I was accepted into the congregation.”

Geneviève and Anne, who had arrived at the convent at a very young age, were never told about the new boarder's stormy beginnings. And Jeanne didn't boast about it.

With her hands clasped, Anne murmured dreamily, “And then you received the letter...”

“Yes. I was given a missive, the first, the only one I've received in my life. It contained the chain and the gold medal I'd given the priest for Grandfather's funeral. Thierry must have bought them back.”

“And what did the letter say?” asked Geneviève, who had read and reread the yellowed piece of paper her friend preciously kept in her cupboard, under the large white handkerchief embroidered with the Villebrand coat-of-arms.

As if she had the paper before her, Jeanne recited in the darkness, “It began with ‘Mademoiselle Jeanne,' as if I was a real lady.

Mademoiselle Jeanne,

Here is the medal that belonged to your family, that the priest gave me to pass on to you. Keep it in memory of your grandfather, and consider it a gesture of reparation for the wrongs my family has done to yours.

I believe I understand now what impulse made you act as you did. I admire courage; that's why I will never forget yours. It will serve as an inspiration to me all my life.

I hope that in time you will understand why I intervened, and that you will not hold it against me, as I do not blame you for your actions.

Mademoiselle, I remain the most faithful and devoted of your servants,

Thierry de Villebrand

“How beautiful and how well written it is!” sighed Anne, getting back into bed.

The true story ended there. The four friends had enjoyed adding various epilogues through the years, creating a legend of love around astonishing but plausible events. Now, all these romantic endings were no longer needed.

By agreeing to go to New France, Jeanne Chatel had moved from hypothetical legend to living adventure. She would be led to her destiny not by a big white horse, but by an even more picturesque sailing ship.

Anne and Geneviève, those docile, fearful future nuns, had no illusions about themselves. They admired their friend's courage, but nothing would induce them to go beyond the reassuring gates that would forever surround their peaceful existence. Without Jeanne's presence, Marie would never have dared face her new destiny, either.

The chapel clock softly sounded. Jeanne slid between the rough sheets, her eyes opened wide in the silvery night. She clasped the gold medal hanging around her neck and dreamed of the future.

4

LE HAVRE
, July, 1672

“Cast off the moorings!” The cry was repeated, and the thick ropes were rolled up like sleeping serpents. The sailors clambered up into the rigging; the sails were unfurled and flapped in the wind.

Slowly the ship turned and slipped out to sea. On the wharf of Le Havre de Grace, the Normandy port from which they set sail, handkerchiefs were waved in farewell.

On the deck of the sailing ship, Sister Bourgeoys's orphans—six novices and five future brides—watched the shore grow distant. A young stranger waved his hat earnestly; Jeanne decided to imagine he was her despairing lover sending his final farewell to the king's daughter whose hand had been refused him.

After a long month's wait in Rouen while the boat was being prepared, the great departure day had finally dawned. Jeanne was leaving her country with no regret, but Marie was crying softly beside her, conscious only of a separation. She was moved by the grief of those among the forty-five passengers who were leaving a loved one behind on the shores of France.

Marie was holding tightly the letter that had changed her life. And Jeanne, her heart sinking, wondered if her very vulnerable friend would find the understanding husband she deserved in Monsieur de Rouville.