Chapter 4

The traveling days passed slowly, in clouds of dust and tedium. The women stayed in the best of whatever inns and convent guest houses they could find, often fighting fleas at night and feeling ill from questionable food by day. Mme de Vouvray was unfailingly kind and a godsend for her patience in amusing Lucie. But her ceaseless chatter nearly sent Pernelle shrieking from the coach. Julie, in one of her sudden changes of mood, chattered happily back. By the time the road—such as it was—began to rise toward the mountains, Pernelle felt she would be an old woman before they reached Chastillon and Mme de Vouvray’s house. She also wished she could get out and walk, because the ruts and rocks and the coach’s bouncing grew steadily worse and she was already bone sore from the jolting travel. A few days to recover from the trip after we get to Chastillon, she told herself, a few days for Lucie to have some freedom to run and play, and then they would press on alone to the border.

But when they reached Chastillon, Lucie fell ill. At first Pernelle thought she was only tired from all the traveling, but the tiredness turned into coughing, and then fever, and the child was in bed for over a week. And though Mme de Vouvray fussed over her nearly as much as Pernelle and Julie did, she was slow getting her strength back. When Pernelle judged Lucie finally well enough to travel, she went to tell madame that they would be leaving in the morning. But Mme de Vouvray was too full of her own news to listen. She was leaning from the window in her upstairs salon, listening to a cackle of voices rising from the street.

“Thank the Blessed Virgin!” she called back in answer, and looked over her shoulder at Pernelle. Her faded blue eyes were shining with excitement. “Have you heard? They’ve caught more of them!”

Something in her voice turned Pernelle cold with sudden fear. “Caught who, madame?”

“Huguenots!” The woman turned back to the window.

“Oh?” Pernelle turned to a side table and picked up an almanac to have a reason for somewhat hiding her face. “Where did they catch them?”

“At the nearest stretch of border. The troop—” Galloping hooves drowned her voice for a moment. “Ah, there go more soldiers! The troop of soldiers that rides the border got the heretics trying to cross the stream. Well, they bring it on themselves, don’t they? If they scorn God’s church, they must take the consequences.” She drew back into the room and sat down in her chair by the window. “We’ve even caught them here in the village—the cowherd found three in a byre one morning last January! Can you imagine?”

“I can.” Pernelle put the book down and went to the other window, unable to look at this generous woman full of happy excitement over the downfall of people like herself and her family. And now she and Lucie and Julie would have to stay longer here in Chastillon. The soldiers would keep close watch along this part of the border until they were sure all the Huguenot band had been caught. Which meant finding a reason to stay until they turned their attention elsewhere.

“Madame?” The woman rose from her chair and came to stand beside Pernelle. “You seem worried. Is Lucie worse again?”

Pernelle made herself smile. “No, she is better. But—”

“Praise all the saints for that! But you must not think of taking her out onto the roads again yet. It’s very little distance to the village of Chalex, but still, you must not be in a hurry.” She sighed and her fat wrinkled face looked suddenly years older. “I know. I had four of my own, a boy and three little girls, and lost them all before they were ten years old.”

Pernelle felt a rush of sympathy for this kind and guileless enemy. “I know, too, madame. I lost two babies. Would you like to come and see Lucie before she goes to sleep again?”

The old woman followed her to the guest chamber, where Lucie was sitting in the middle of the big, crimson-curtained bed, sucking her thumb, and Julie was sitting on a stool in a shaft of sunlight mending a skirt. Mme de Vouvray sat heavily on the bed’s edge and started a clapping game with Lucie, singing a song about foxes and chickens that produced torrents of laughter from both of them. Pernelle watched, wondering how it was that people could be such a bewildering weave of kindness and cruelty. Please God, she prayed, let the soldiers move quickly on.

But it took days for the soldiers to leave, and just as word spread that they’d gone, it began to rain. And went on raining for four days, veiling the mountains in clouds and fog, turning the roads to muddy streams, and making Pernelle think she would go mad before it stopped.

But finally, the sun came back and shone steadily, and the roads began to dry. Pernelle and Julie bade a firm farewell to Mme de Vouvray. Who, Pernelle thought, would happily have kept Lucie with her forever. And kept her and Julie, too, as the price of keeping the child. In her anxious care for all three, Mme de Vouvray insisted on sending a manservant to see them safely along the day’s slow journey to Chalex, the village where they were supposedly meeting Pernelle’s nonexistent sister at the house of a nonexistent cousin.

“How are we going to get rid of him?” Julie whispered frantically as they put on their cloaks in the guest chamber.

“I have no idea. I could strangle the dear woman. Pray. That’s all I can think of.”

They set out, Mme de Vouvray waving from her gate, Pernelle on Blazon with Lucie in front of her, Julie riding pillion behind the manservant. Before they’d gone a mile, Pernelle’s exasperated desire to do away with their hostess’s unwanted aid had grown like a biblical mustard seed. The man, a groom they’d hardly seen before, talked more than any three women and was as insatiably curious as a child. He had surely been better trained than that, but away from his mistress’s eye—and ear—it was, “Where are you ladies going? Only to Chalex, or farther? It’s a sad little excuse for a place, much better stay in Chastillon, where things are happening. And where have you come from? Did you hear about those heretics the soldiers got? I’d dearly like to see a good hanging of them. Or better yet, a burning. Ruining France, I say, and so our blessed king said finally, and now everyone knows them for the outlaws they are! Lucky you have me to protect you if we come on any of them, and they’re around, make no mistake.”

“I have no doubt of it,” Pernelle said gravely. To her relief, Julie—for once—kept quiet, and the two of them traded desperate looks. Unless they could rid themselves of this fool, they were going to be discovered, because he would stick to them like mud until they arrived at their imaginary destination. Startled by birds flying from a pine, Blazon danced under Pernelle and spattered her skirt with mud. She brushed at it and then her hand stilled. Mud. Her eyes grew thoughtful and she patted the horse’s neck. Thick, sticky, slippery mud. Not everywhere, the road was drying out, and not deep everywhere. But the chattering servant—when he wasn’t regaling them with stories of his dice-throwing triumphs—had warned them every mile, it seemed, that where the track was most rutted, the mud might be over the horses’ hocks, even up to their knees.

Suddenly, he swore, called them to a momentary halt, and dismounted to tighten his horse’s girth. He didn’t see the rider some way ahead of them swerve wide around a place in the track’s center. Pernelle watched the rider disappear as the road curved. The servant remounted and they began moving again. She looked over her shoulder. No one was in sight behind them. She let Blazon drop back a little, under the pretext of shifting Lucie’s weight, and caught Julie’s eye. “Hold on,” she mouthed, tilting her head slightly toward the road in front of them. “Hold tight.” Julie’s eyes widened and she nodded. Pernelle brought Blazon close up beside the servant again and began to talk, asking with smiling admiration how he’d gotten so good at dice. Still talking, he glanced at the track’s muddy center and turned his horse to pass it on the right, but as he did, he looked back at Julie to see if she, too, was appreciating him. Pernelle tightened her grip on Lucie, forced Blazon sideways, and sent the servant’s horse into the mudhole.

“Oh,” she cried, “I am so sorry, but Blazon stumbled! Is your horse hurt?”

Cursing steadily, the man urged the horse forward, but the beast only shook the reins and refused to budge. Finally, the man had no choice but to dismount into mud well over his ankles. To his credit, he held out his arms to Julie.

“Come, mademoiselle, I will get you to dry ground.”

She leaned into his hands, and he swung her to the side of the mudhole and set her on her feet. Then he stepped deeper into the mire and led the horse out of the hole. But once out of the mud, the horse tried to pull away, tossing its head, and they saw that it was limping. Pernelle had dismounted, too, carrying Lucie, and stood in the road, joining her voice to the servant’s in loud complaints against rain, mud, and the king’s failure to see to the roads.

She reached into the small slit in her skirt and took several small coins from her purse. “Your horse can go no farther. It looks to me as though you will have to lead him home, so you had best turn back now. Julie, you can ride behind me. Blazon will not mind. It’s not far to Chalex, and there’s only one small stream to cross, just before the village itself. I cannot be late, my sister will be very angry if we make her wait even longer to start the rest of the journey, you know. So if you will be so good, please untie my maid’s saddle bag for her.”

Julie took the bag and went to tie it to Blazon’s saddle. Pernelle thrust the coin into the protesting man’s hand, remounted, and held out her hand to Julie. They left him pocketing the coins and resignedly coaxing his lame horse back toward Chastillon.

When they’d rounded the bend in the road and were far enough away, Julie burst out laughing. “That was wonderfully done, Pernelle! I could never have thought of it!”

Pernelle laughed grimly. “I owe the poor horse an apology, though.”

“How much farther to the village—to Chalex?”

“Much of the rest of the day, because most of the way is uphill. Just before the village we’ll come to the stream I mentioned. Then we have to get past the village without being seen. And then we’ll be at the border.”

“And then, if God keeps the soldiers away, we’ll be across and nearly home. I keep thinking of Geneva as the Promised Land, Pernelle.”

“Mmmm.” But Pernelle remembered that in Scripture, Moses didn’t reach the Promised Land. He died on the border. She sighed inwardly. Even if they reached Geneva, Pernelle doubted it would be a Promised Land for her, already homesick as she was for Languedoc and vineyards and her own musical language. She smiled down at Lucie, who lay quietly in her lap, talking to herself in Provençal and pointing as she watched clouds like fat sheep floating across the sky. But it might be a Promised Land for her daughter. At the very least, they would not be hunted there. Behind her, Julie had begun singing a psalm under her breath.

“When God brought back the captives of Zion, we were like those who dreamed . . .

And they said among the heathen, God has done great things for them.”