II

 

 

 

God was merciful and Aimée didn’t cry when I woke her and explained that the three of us were in danger and had to leave at once. I didn’t worry for Valentin; he was frightened but obedient. Moonlight outside filtered down through the tall pines to light our way, along with the lantern and candles I’d stolen. I opened the door of the barn attached to the side of the house and found the horse belonging to the Marquis de Boisaulne, the one M. du Herle had lent to father. The stallion was white with a silvery mane and gentle. He didn’t shy away from my touch, but ate a carrot greedily from my hand.

It was fitting that my would-be enslaver’s horse would aid us in our escape. In two days’ time we would be in Genève. I could sell the horse and tackle for perhaps as much as five hundred livres. We might live in a cheap boarding house for a year on that money, but our funds would run out eventually. Instead, I would visit the offices of the publishing houses from whose catalogs my late husband used to order, and I would set up my own accounts with them. The illicit works that landed the pastor in prison fetched the best profit, so I would specialize in those. I’d start as a traveling book peddler, like the ones who used to compete with my husband’s shop. I wasn’t afraid of the mountain paths that skirted the customs offices on the borders between Savoy and France. If I were stopped, no one would suspect me, a woman traveling with children. When I had saved enough, I would open my own shop as a widow, under a false name in some town or other where no one would know me. I wouldn’t be a burden on Father anymore.

The horse was fine and strong enough that the two children and I and our sacks all fit on his back easily, riding astride in the dark. It was less than an hour at a careful, slow walk to the hamlet of Nant-Pierre and Hortense’s farmhouse. Usually my younger sister, Françoise-Angélique, was the one I confided in, but her twin baby girls were barely four weeks old, and her health had been delicate since the birth. I would have to take my chances with Hortense and hope that, for once, she would take my side.

I brought the horse into Hortense’s barn and tied him up with the other animals, while the children waited. The poor things were fainting with weariness. We found the side door to the house unlatched and went in. I lit a candle from the embers in the hearth, and by its light I found two old woolen blankets in a chest. I made an uncomfortable bed for us on the rug before the hearth, and we fell into an exhausted sleep.

I woke several times through the rest of the night, my dreams troubled and my limbs numb from the hard floor, but Valentin and Aimée slept soundly. I was lying awake and alert when Hortense discovered us at dawn. She cried out in surprise before I sat up and she recognized me.

“Violaine, what on earth?” she said softly.

I put my finger to my lips and pointed to the children still sleeping. I slid out of the blankets and stood up. “Come,” I whispered, “let’s go into the barn. I can help you with the milking and I’ll tell you everything.”

Arm in arm we went through the door of the kitchen into the barn that adjoined the house, and while I helped her milk the cows and goats, feed the pig and the chickens, and gather eggs, I told her the story and my plans for Genève. I begged her to lend me enough to pay for food and lodging for the next few days, to tide us over until we could sell the horse. She said little at first, only listening, asking questions, making me repeat myself, and shaking her head. I could have wished for more sympathy and outrage from her. She didn’t like the Genève plan one bit, it was clear. But she agreed to speak to her husband, Pierre-Joseph, on my behalf.

We went back inside to give the children and Pierre-Joseph their breakfast and then served ourselves. Aimée and Valentin joked and squabbled with their cousins, Ronald and Jacquot, and left with them to take the cows to the pasture. Hortense repeated all that I’d told her to Pierre-Joseph. I had left out nothing, sure of being in the right. I hoped to leave soon, for the daylight was wasting and I wanted to get to Genève before anyone could come after us.

“Well, that takes the cake,” Pierre-Joseph said finally. “Running off like a scared chicken, straight into a fox’s den. You’d get eaten whole in Genève. What makes you think I’d put up money so you could shame your family and end up dead in a gutter?”

Before I could respond, Hortense added, “Really, it’s monstrously selfish, Violaine. How could you even think of doing that to the children? Father must be at his wit’s end to accept an offer like that. Then you torment him and make it all the worse by running away, when it was all your fault in the first place.”

I was almost too astonished to speak. “My fault?”

“You refused three different marriage offers, all made in good faith, and from perfectly good families, all of them. Any one of them would have eased Father’s mind, and you and the children would have been settled. He might not even have had to go on that accursed journey if it hadn’t been for you draining his money and being a constant source of trouble.”

“And if I understand right,” Pierre-Joseph added, “if you don’t go, we could all be punished with new taxes like the southern Vaudois, or worse, who knows? And you want to steal a horse too, and break the law like an outright criminal, and drag us into it. All while your father’s just trying save us.”

“I always knew you were prideful,” Hortense said, “but this is beyond arrogant. How bad could life be if you’re the companion of a marquis?”

“But we wouldn’t be married,” I said. “Does no one care that I’d be living with a man in sin? Would anyone even still speak to me here in the villages if they knew?”

“Pearls and silver cover a multitude of sins,” Hortense said wryly. “But you said yourself, Father intends that no one will find out. You and I both know Father’s done nearly the same thing himself, keeping Edmée with him. He’s as kind to her as to a wife, and she’s been as good to us as a mother. Do you think you’re above them, too good to live as Edmée does?”

Of course she would have to bring that up. I twisted away from them in my seat, folded my arms tightly across my chest, and looked down at the floor. “Of course not, but this is different. No one knows this man at all. I’m being sent off like a lamb to the slaughter.”

She puffed out her breath in exasperation. “You’re always so melodramatic about everything. That’s your problem. You imagine the worst, but it might not be so bad. I don’t believe Father would have agreed to it if he didn’t think you’d be well-cared for. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I can’t support you putting Father, yourself, or the rest of us in danger. It’s no easy thing, but for the good of all us you ought to accept the arrangement. Better to be dishonored than to starve or end up in prison.”

In tears again, I felt a tug at my sleeve. It was Aimée, who burst into tears herself at the sight of me crying.

“Maman, I don’t want to leave here. Couldn’t we live here with Tante Hortense forever?”

Hortense squeezed her into a hug and pulled her up onto her lap, comforting her. Outside, I could hear Valentin’s joyful shouts as he played with Hortense’s boys. I felt defeated and hopeless, and for the first time, I began to imagine giving in, walking willingly into this nightmare from which I could see no immediate escape. My mind revolted at the truth, but I forced myself to face it. Aimée and Valentin could be happy here. What life would it be for them, living on the road with me trying to scrabble out a living as a book peddler in the mountains and towns, keeping one step ahead of the police and the customs agents? Not to mention that for committing the crime of horse theft, I could be imprisoned or sentenced to labor in a workhouse. Even if I stayed out of prison, I’d be entangling myself in risky financial investments, just as my father had done.

I shuddered and imagined the alternative. Shut up in some old aristocrat’s hunting lodge in the woods, with no one to protect or rescue me if he turned out to be wicked or violent, subject to this man’s whims, however depraved and cruel – to being shamed, degraded, and abused. I’d read certain books in my late husband’s shop, books he had stocked not only illegally but also hypocritically, given his piety – books he sold only to customers who ordered them in advance or asked for them by name, that cost double or triple the price of ordinary ones. Those books, titillating as they were, had given me an alarming impression of the proclivities of aristocrats and clerics.

Or perhaps … perhaps the Marquis would be kind. Perhaps the stories I had read were only that, stories meant to shock and arouse, obscene exaggerations. Perhaps I would only need to perform the ordinary duties of a wife, and would merely have to endure it, as I had endured Pastor Bergeret’s weekly attentions on Sabbath evenings, and then I would be left alone. I might even have servants to do the household work. And perhaps he wouldn’t be as old or ugly as all that. Perhaps we could even have conversations – he must be an educated man, after all. And if he truly were cruel, I could simply run away and then face whatever consequences might follow. He could hardly keep me prisoner there forever, could he? I could at least meet him, as Father had begged me to. In the end, he might not even like me and might change his mind once he had met me.

“I’m going out for a walk,” I said. “I need time to think, alone.”

They traded glances and watched worriedly as I went out, but didn’t rise to stop me. My feet took me around the side of the house to the barn door. How I wished I could saddle the Marquis’s magnificent white horse and ride away into the woods, gallop far from all this trouble and confusion, high up into the mountains, and live in a cave like a hermit. I wouldn’t last long once winter came, but never mind, let the cold take me for all I cared. I started to compose a poem in my mind about how I would return to haunt my family as an angry shade, one of those spirits that wailed when the wind whipped through the valleys during the winter storms.

But when I reached the barn door, I found Pierre-Joseph had tied it shut with a tightly knotted cord. I’d have needed a knife to cut it open. I had packed a knife in one of my sacks, but it was inside the house. Just then the sound of clopping hooves and neighing horses came from the lane. I peered around the side of the house and saw that it was Father riding our old mare, Claudette. Another man rode beside him on a black horse. Pierre-Joseph and Hortense came out of the house, spoke to them, and pointed them toward me. They rode up to where I stood, and Father climbed down from Claudette with a jump to embrace me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other man climb down out of his saddle slowly, averting his gaze from Father’s emotional display.

Violaine, how could you?” Father said, low enough that the other man wouldn’t hear. “Edmée and I were so worried when we woke up this morning and found you gone.” He drew back to look me in the face. “But Hortense says you’ve come to your senses? She believed she’d persuaded you.”

I drew in a deep breath, my heart pounding. “Yes, I’ll go to the Marquis. I’ll do as you ask.” I couldn’t bring myself to apologize for running away, nor to return his embrace.

“This is Monsieur du Herle,” Father said, putting a hand on the shoulder of his companion. “He’s come to accompany you there.”

M. du Herle cleared his throat and looked guilty and uncomfortable. He had light gray-blue eyes, almost silver, just as I remembered from the shop. They were fixed intently on me now, as then. The Marquis’s pimp, I reminded myself. His procurer. For an involuntary instant I found myself trying to decide whether he was handsome. He was a lean man of about thirty years, of medium height. His clothes were well-tailored and elegant but muted and dark in cut and color. The fine silver-handled dress sword of a gentleman hung at his waist in a richly worked silver scabbard. The skin on his cheeks was clean-shaven and slightly pock-marked; he had high cheekbones, a narrow chin, light reddish-brown hair under his hat, and a slightly bulbous nose. Both his ears were pierced with ebony rings. No, he wasn’t strikingly handsome, but it wasn’t an unpleasant face to look at, and I liked the modest turn of his lips, as though he were about to deny a compliment.

“Good afternoon, Madame Bergeret.” He bowed and I was struck by a certain shyness in his gesture. “If you’re ready we could leave at once and arrive before dark. If you need anything from your father’s house we can have it sent on later, but the manor is well-provisioned, and I think you’ll find all you need there. The Marquis wishes you to be comfortable.”

He didn’t bother to pay me any of the extravagant compliments my father had told me about or make a speech. If the Marquis had any sort of honorable intention, if he wasn’t some deformed hunchback, why did he not come to meet and fetch me himself? Perhaps that was precisely the reason for all this bizarre mystification and for subjecting me to such an alarming proposal by proxy. Perhaps the Marquis was a cripple, or clubfooted, or hare-lipped; some physical deformity had made a recluse of him, so he had shut himself up in that remote hunting lodge with no company to relieve his loneliness. I wanted to ask M. du Herle if this was so, but the question died on my lips. I was fearful of offending M. du Herle or making an enemy of him right away. All I could do for now was place myself in the hands of Providence and hope M. du Herle’s respectful tone and quiet voice boded well. If it was nothing but a physical deformity to worry about, if the Marquis was a good man in an ugly body, then … perhaps all would yet be well. I had always prided myself on seeing beyond appearances, on not judging books by their covers, prizing wisdom, learning, and the beauty of the soul above jewels or wealth or material comforts.

I badly wanted to believe in this possibility; the thought comforted me. With his fine silver sword, M. du Herle easily severed the knotted cord that Pierre Joseph had used to tie up the barn door to prevent me from running away with the Marquis’s horse again. If M. du Herle knew of my attempted horse theft, he politely refrained from mentioning it.

He said very little as he saddled up the Marquis’s horse for me, apart from telling me my white steed’s name was Zéphyr and his own black mount was called Hadès.

Valentin and Aimée rushed out to say goodbye to me, Hortense trailing after them. Hortense had somehow explained things to them. Maman was going away on a brief journey, but it wouldn’t be long before she returned for a visit, and we would see each other again very soon. Aimée cried plentiful tears nonetheless. Valentin tried to act manly and to keep from crying, but hugged me tightly and kissed me on each cheek six times. A small smile played around M. du Herle’s mouth as he looked on. Then his face resumed its serious expression as I mounted Zéphyr. He didn’t flinch or protest when I explained that I preferred to ride astride rather than side-saddle, as I had little experience with horses and felt safer that way. I was allowed to bring nothing with me, not even the sack with the knife in it.

“We’re off then,” said M. du Herle. “We’ll send word when we’ve arrived safely.”

Why couldn’t my father accompany us? Why hadn’t he insisted upon it? These were questions I was too afraid to ask. I felt like a girl in a fairy tale, bewitched by a wizard’s spell. Would I turn into a swan at dusk? Had some magic stolen my voice so that I didn’t scream or shout protests? What power did this M. du Herle wield, that he had gotten his way despite his reserved manner, his deep but quiet voice, and his sparing words? As far as I understood it, not one of us had even laid eyes on this Marquis de Boisaulne, who for all we knew didn’t even really exist, though he must have put his signature to the contract with my father, and a lawyer must also have witnessed it.

At first, M. du Herle and I rode side by side on the lane as it climbed uphill.

“Let me know if you need to stop and rest,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll just stop in the village before we get to the manor.”

“There’s a village?”

“Not a large one, more of a hamlet. Part of the domain of Boisaulne. They call it Maisnie-la-Forêt.”

“But you’re not from there?”

“My estate is in Picardy. In the north of France.”

“Have you been in the Marquis’s employ a long time?”

“A long time, yes.”

“You know him well then, I suppose?”

“Fairly well.”

After a time the lane narrowed and we began a series of switchbacks, M. du Herle riding ahead of me. I didn’t mind; it made it less awkward to ride in silence, and he clearly meant to discourage me from asking questions. Perhaps I ought to have kept trying, but I felt too hopeless and wrung out from my tears, too exhausted from my sleepless night, to understand or to make conversation anyway. After another hour or two, M. du Herle led us onto a side path I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. It was more of a game trail than a proper horse path. Now and then I saw red deer leaping away from us down the hillside. Later we followed a small herd of chamois, the goat-antelopes whose skins makes the softest of leathers. The horses stepped over piles of their droppings along the way. I could only hope we’d see no signs of wolves, lynxes, bears, or wild boars.

After another hour I was forced to ask for a stop, because I needed to relieve myself. M. du Herle dismounted, stretched his limbs, and pointed toward a patch of the woods where rocks, thick trees, and bushes provided some cover. He turned and looked in the opposite direction, crossing his arms over his chest, as I made water behind the trees and came back. Then he took his turn going off into the trees, while I watched the horses and let them munch on leaves and grass.

As he climbed back into Hadès’s saddle, I noticed M. du Herle wore a signet ring turned inward on the fourth finger of his left hand, as noblemen did when they were married. I didn’t know whether to feel reassured by this or not. He still turned his silver-blue eyes on me from time to time in a way I didn’t find comforting. I doubted that a man who respected wedding vows would be acquiring me and bringing me to his master in this manner.

The shadows of the pines, elms, and alders we rode through grew thicker and longer with the approach of evening, and M. du Herle urged the horses to a canter until we came out of the forest. We forded a stream and met a lane wide enough for a buggy or a wagon to travel along. With a glance at me to see if I was all right, he kicked Hadès’s flank, and the horse broke into a gallop, Zéphyr matching his pace one length behind. We reached Maisnie-la-Forêt a little before sunset.

The village was a cluster of houses in a clearing above the stream our road had been following, with farms and pastures radiating out from it. There was a tiny chapel on a hill at one end, and in the center a wagoner’s shop, a communal oven and bakery, a tavern, a tanner and furrier, and a scattering of market stalls.

We dismounted and tied the horses to a post in front of the wagoner’s shop.

“I need to speak to the owner inside,” M. du Herle said. “Do you mind waiting here? If you’re hungry or thirsty you can go to the tavern and they’ll serve you. You only have to tell them you’re with me.”

I nodded and he went in. His tone was still polite, though we’d ridden in silence for much of the way. I should have been starving, for I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but I had no appetite. I wandered toward the tavern anyway. A young woman sat knitting in front of it, next to a few baskets of cherries.

“Good day, Madame,” the woman said. She had positioned her chair to catch the last of the day’s sun.

“Good day to you too. Are the cherries for sale?” I knew I ought to eat something, if only to keep up my strength, and they did look ripe and free of worms.

“I was just fixing to take them back inside, but I’ll let you have a pound for three sous.” She grinned at me.

“Oh no, I just wanted a few.”

“Ah well, that’s all right, have some. I saw you ride in with Monsieur du Herle. I take it he’s brought you with him.”

“Yes.” I put a cherry in my mouth, chewed, and spat the pit into my hand to throw on the ground. The fruit was juicy and sweet, and I felt a little of my appetite returning. I took a handful.

“Is the Marquis de Boisaulne’s hunting lodge far from here?” I asked after I’d chewed another cherry and spat out the pit.

“Not at all. Just another mile up the road and across the bridge. You can’t see it from here. The road curves up and around and it’s hidden back among the trees. Where’ve you come from?”

I told her a made-up name instead of the village I was from, and she squinted. “It must be on the other side of the mountain from us. We don’t usually go across the river.”

“Why not?”

“No one wants to be mistaken for a poacher in the Marquis’s forest. He’s a great hunter.”

“Is he?”

“You’d think so. Monsieur Fréret, the wagoner, delivers letters and milk and eggs to the manor each day when anyone’s staying there, and a load of supplies each week. But they never need meat. He brings back animal carcasses all the time – they’re left for him in the courtyard. Sometimes with the meat still on them, sometimes just the skin and bones.”

“Oh,” I said, repulsed at the thought of bloody piles of dead animals and pelts.

“We’re allowed to hunt and cut wood and forage all we like this side of the river,” she said. “But with all that Monsieur Fréret brings back in his wagon from the manor we don’t need to that much.”

I shuddered. “What’s the Marquis like?”

She shrugged. “Oh, we never see him. He likes his privacy. We only deal with Monsieur du Herle. He comes once or twice a month to settle the balances and see if we need anything. Monsieur du Herle’s quite reasonable and good to us. It used to be we didn’t have a doctor, and you’d have to go down the mountain if you wanted to see one. Now Doctor Guillon comes every Wednesday from Thônes and stays overnight with us in the tavern. He does a good business here. The Marquis pays for his lodging and fees.”

“That sounds kind of him,” I said. We both fell silent for a few moments while I ate more cherries. She introduced herself as Madame Jacquenod, and I told her my family name of Bergeret. If no one from here ever went to the other side of the mountain, I supposed I didn’t need to fear for my family’s reputation.

She gave me a guarded look. “It’s a long time since I saw him bring a woman through here.”

I swallowed and felt the prick of tears at the corners of my eyes, and blinked quickly. Of course there had been others before me. “How long did the last one stay?”

“I never saw any of them leave,” she said seriously. “They must go out another way than they come in.”

“I’m nervous.” The words came out of me almost against my will.

She shook her head pityingly, and there was another long silence. Then she said, “In my grandmother’s day there were tales. Livestock or even children going missing. My brothers used to frighten me with stories of an ogre who lived in the forest across the bridge.” She chuckled. “They called him the alder-king, the roi des aulnes, and they said the Marquis’s lineage bore the ogre’s blood in its veins from many centuries earlier, when he took the local nobleman’s daughter to wife.”

I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I was struck with a sudden chill, and for a moment my teeth chattered.

Madame Jacquenod looked embarrassed. “But it’s nothing to trouble yourself over. I suppose there’s just another road that goes out from behind the manor that the Marquis and his guests use for privacy, that’s all.” She wrinkled her brow in concern. “But if they’re ever unkind to you there, we’re just a mile away.”

A little boy toddled out of the tavern, planted himself in her lap, and demanded supper. Madame Jacquenod fed him a cherry and smiled at me.

I smiled back. “Is there a regular market day here?”

“Tuesday morning and all day Thursday. I’m usually the last to leave when our trees are yielding. We have cherries, plums, and walnuts growing behind the tavern.”

“Then maybe I’ll see you there.”

“Yes, perhaps we’ll see you then,” she said, although her tone was noncommittal. “We’ll certainly have green walnuts by Saint John’s Day.”

M. du Herle came out of the wagoner’s shop and looked about until he caught sight of me. “Good evening, Madame Jacquenod,” he called. “Madame Bergeret, are you ready? We ought to be going. It will be dark soon.”