Chapter 3

Pernelle led them downstairs to the kitchen. A pair of saddle bags, tightly packed with clothes, food, Lucie’s little wooden lamb, and small valuables, lay beside the door to the back courtyard.

Charles said, “Wait here. I have to deal with the guard. If—”

“Deal with him?” Julie said sharply.

“No, not that. I’m going to make sure the new father continues to get his much-needed sleep. But if something goes wrong, if he cries out, if anyone comes, don’t come outside. Hide the bags, wash your faces, take off the habits, and get in bed. You’ve been sleeping, you know nothing. Not me, not why I attacked the guard, nothing. Now pray.”

He slipped through the door, leaving it a little open so they could hear. They watched him hoist himself to the top of the wall. He leaned out and they heard a grunt. He was soon back inside.

“He’s deep in a drunk’s sleep. I gave him a small tap on the head just to make sure he stays there. He’ll wake none the worse. Let’s go.”

He picked up the saddle bags, and the women came behind him, Pernelle carrying the sleeping Lucie. Charles loaded the bags onto Blazon, David’s white-faced chestnut gelding, muffled the horse’s hooves with rags, and led him through the gate. He put a warning finger gently to his lips, handed Pernelle the reins, and went back into the courtyard, his long black cloak making him a shadow blacker than the darkness. He closed the gate and she heard the heavy inside bar thud home. Then the darkness above the wall thickened as he climbed over and dropped silently into the dirt lane. Thinking that he still had the same odd mix of recklessness and attention to details that he’d had when they were young, she handed back Blazon’s reins and the little band of fugitives made its way toward a gap in the town wall.

As Pernelle picked her way through the pile of broken stone, she thought that this was one thing, at least, to thank the Catholic authorities for: letting the wall collapse, so that the Huguenots would have no walls to hide behind if they rebelled. When they were clear of the wall, Charles hurried them through the starlit dark to the tree-sheltered dip in the ground where his own horse was tied.

“Does that farm track still run north beside the road?” he said softly to Pernelle as he unwound the muffling rags wrapped around Blazon’s hooves.

“It does.”

“Can you find it?”

“Yes.” She gave Lucie into his arms and started toward the track. The other two followed, leading the horses. The only sounds were their own soft stumbling over the uneven ground, and a nightjar’s harsh sudden call from a pine. Then a man’s voice called from near the town wall and another voice answered. Charles hissed “Down!” and all three dropped to the ground. They lay without moving, leaving nothing to see from the wall but the dark shapes of grazing horses and three black humps in the ground. The voices turned to loud laughter and moved away, toward the center of town, but Charles kept the fugitives where they were. It seemed to Pernelle a lifetime before he let them up.

When she finally found the farm track, he let them stop for a moment.

“There’s enough starlight to ride now, as far as the track goes. Then we’ll find somewhere to rest until dawn.”

“Why not keep riding while the dark lasts?” Julie objected.

“Because honest people don’t travel on moonless nights, especially not women.”

Pernelle mounted Blazon and took Lucie. Charles pulled Julie up behind him on the mare. They rode past vineyards and fields, their passage making little sound on the dirt track. When the track narrowed and began to climb toward rocky hills, Charles led them aside into a stand of scrub oak.

“We have an hour or two before dawn. We’ll eat now and then sleep a little, until there’s traffic on the road to make us less noticeable.”

Charles tethered the horses. Then he made a bed of his cloak on the ground for Lucie, and the women brought out bread, olives, and cheese from their small supplies. Charles untied the water flask from his saddle and they ate in exhausted silence. Pernelle had thought she couldn’t possibly close her eyes, but after she’d given some bread and cheese to Lucie, who roused briefly, she lay down beside the child and plunged into sleep.

When Charles woke her, the sun was still below the hills, but it was full day and hot. They were quickly on their way again. When they reached the Avignon road, he led them placidly onto it, as though they had God’s own time at their disposal to get where they were going, and no one paid the traveling nuns and their Jesuit escort much attention. The long morning was nearly over and Lucie was fussing, wanting down, when drumming hoofbeats and a cloud of dust announced fast-moving riders coming toward them. The hoofbeats could only mean soldiers because this was not a courier route and by law, galloping was not allowed. The other travelers, mostly peasants as laden with baskets and wood as their donkeys, scurried apprehensively off the road. Charles and Pernelle barely had time to rein their horses aside before a half dozen helmeted and armored dragoons were upon them. As the soldiers swept past, Charles sketched a vague blessing on the air. Shifting Lucie’s weight, Pernelle, too, held up a gentle hand. And shot a sharply rude gesture at the soldiers’ backs after they passed. Julie stuffed a handful of her veil into her mouth to stifle a fit of giggles.

But that was the worst that happened that day or the next. Late on the third day’s morning, they passed the turnoff to Orange—of necessity, they’d traveled slowly because of the child—and slipped into an abandoned vine worker’s cabin on the edge of a deserted vineyard. While Lucie explored every dirty nook and cranny of the derelict cabin’s dirt floor, Pernelle and Julie shed their nuns’ habits and veils and put on their own clothes, becoming a widow in decorous black and her even more plainly dressed maid in unadorned blue. Charles ripped the habits to shreds and buried them behind the cabin. Pernelle and Julie combed out their hair and rebraided it, and then Pernelle covered her hair with a black lace scarf and Julie resumed her little white coif. They set out more bread, cheese, and olives on a cloth on the sun-streaked floor, ate enough to quiet, if not satisfy, their hunger, and started again for Carpentras.

They reached it in late afternoon, and Charles halted them when they were through the town gate.

“Before I take you to the Sacred Heart guest house, Pernelle, we’ll go to the Jesuit college. I’ll introduce you to the rector as my mother’s niece. You were visiting her when she took sick. That story is maman’s idea, so if anyone asks, she’ll vouch for you.”

“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.