The pipes are frozen again, so when I’m not teaching, or sketching Adrienne Lafayette, I’m hauling water. One bright day in February, I’m taking two buckets out to the stream when I notice a few of our boys loitering at the side of the mill. I know they’re up to no good because they all scatter when they see me, but they don’t know who they’re dealing with. Having made my own mischief here back in the day, I know which way they’re going to run, so I drop my buckets and nab the ringleader—Oscar, a lanky fourteen-year-old with asthma.
I’ve got him by the collar when I realize I’ve also caught him red-handed. Well, white-handed anyway—chalk dust is all over his dark blue mitten, and when I look up at the side of the mill, I see a V.
“Have you lost your mind?” I ask, giving him a little shake.
He glares. “I’m only doing what my papa would want.”
His father is with de Gaulle in England, trying to save us from the Nazis, but Oscar’s just a boy and I want to slap sense into him. “You think he’d want you to get shot? You know the Germans are killing French boys for—”
“You’re not going to tell.”
“I should! You think it’s nice to let other people in the village be arrested because of what you’re doing?”
“War isn’t nice,” he says, but at least he has the grace to look a little ashamed. “The gendarmes let the others go; they couldn’t prove anything. I wouldn’t let anybody else take the blame.”
He promises he won’t do it again, but I don’t believe him. He does carry the buckets of water back to the castle for me, though, where the mood is dark because of the news about the forthcoming spectacle at Riom. At the behest of Hitler, the Marshal is going to put our former political leaders on trial. The idea is to prove that this war—and our defeat—is all their fault. There’s a rumor going around the square tower that the Baron de LaGrange will be called to testify against his old colleagues in the cabinet.
Nobody knows what he’ll do if that happens. Anna’s father is a decorated war hero, but these days bravery—or even decency—is hard to come by, and it’s getting harder and harder to wait for a hero to save us. I look down at the chalk in my hand, thinking that I should be doing more. I can’t go to London to join de Gaulle, but I know how to draw . . .
TWENTY-FIVE
ADRIENNE
Paris
Spring 1783
Can a decent man advise you to ruin your life?
Lafayette wrote this to his mistress in a letter from Chavaniac that was soon passed round court—as, of course, he knew it would be. It was the written proof Aglaé needed to convince her husband to reconcile. Thus, my husband took all the blame for the affair. He wrote that he had been the pursuer—Aglaé always resisting. He wrote that she never shared his feelings. He wrote that she pleaded with him to release her. He wrote that now all that remained to be seen was whether or not he was an honorable man . . . and he wanted to be.
The letter pained me deeply. Worse, it did Aglaé no good. For Aglaé’s mother disowned her to save the family reputation, accusing her daughter of stooping so low as to whore with footmen. It was that last blow—a mother’s betrayal—that broke my husband’s mistress. Aglaé did not wait for her family to lock her away; instead, she gifted her jewels, shaved her head, and went to the convent in shame.
I felt shame too, for I detested to see my faith used in cruelty. It should be no punishment, no tragedy, to dedicate one’s life to God. It should be a joy dictated by conscience. Faith ought never to form the bars of a prison. This was a terrible injustice in which I had played a part. Would my husband’s mistress have come to ruin if I had mastered my jealousy—if my father had never seen me lose my composure?
The duc d’Ayen meant well in his way, and I had taken some pleasure in my father’s defense of me. Perhaps even some small part of me condoned my father’s role in my rival’s comeuppance. I would not—could not—take all the blame, but on my knees in prayer I acknowledged that Grand-mère was right to say jealousy was the most certain and wicked of emotions.
Perhaps also the most destructive.
I knew too that even as Gilbert’s affair with Aglaé hurt me and destroyed her, it had only enhanced his reputation. Lafayette was now thought worldlier, wiser, a man of more consequence. And I was reputed to be saintly and virtuous. That was the way of it in France.
Very well, then. I would have to make peace with the fact that Lafayette might again take a mistress. If so, let it be someone intelligent and kind, someone not so vulnerable to scandal or to being harmed the way Aglaé had been. Someone who would at least, in the words of Grand-mère, be the charming sort with whom a wife enjoys taking tea! However, my indulgence would come with a price; whereas I had given my whole heart to Gilbert as a girl, now I would keep some of it for myself. That was the only way I would be able to prevent jealousy from festering. For I too had lost my way and wanted to start anew.