“Don’t look at me that way,” she says. “The Nazis are executing French officers in retaliation—just pulling them out of prison camps and shooting them. My husband wasn’t shot for these latest incidents, but he could’ve been. Next time, he might be.”
She’s not wrong. The Nazis love to shoot people they think will make big news—and a French nobleman will send a message that we’re all just sheep to them, no matter what airs we put on. Even so, I can’t believe what she’s considering. “You think they’ll set your husband free if you go to Germany in his place? You’ve lost your mind! He’s a high-value hostage; they’re not going to make that trade. Even if they would, you’d be helping the enemy.”
“But the chief of the government says—”
“To hell with him!” I don’t care that I’ve said it in the middle of a church. “And to hell with you if you’re going to—what—work in one of their factories making guns for the Nazis? Your husband would never be able to look you in the eye again, and neither would I.”
She slides back on the bench and puts her face in her hands. “I don’t know what to do, Marthe! I feel so guilty.”
“For what?”
She’s quiet so long that I begin to wonder—or maybe even hope, in spite of my anger and distrust—that she’s felt about me the way I feel about her. But in the end she says, “For being alive, when your Henri is dead. For being free, when my husband is in a cage. For not being able to do anything that could make the least bit of difference to the world.”
That’s not what we were taught here at Chavaniac. It’s not what Adrienne Lafayette believed when she lived here. It’s not what Madame Beatrice believed when she made this place a haven for desperate children. And I don’t believe it either. I want to make a difference. More of one, anyway. I’m just not yet sure how.
I retreat to my turret. To my escape at the bottom of a bottle, where I won’t feel anything. But once I’m good and drunk, I stare at the block of translucent marble the baroness procured for me. I’ve been studying it for days, thinking about the veins. Studying my sketches, deciding which one best captures Adrienne Lafayette. Wishing I could bring her to life again. I should make a clay model first, but tonight I just want to hit something, so I grab a hammer and point chisel to rough it out even though it will get grit, dust, and chunks of stone everywhere. I should be doing this outside; it’s messy and hard work. Hard on my arms, shoulders, and back. It hurts . . . but I find that I want it to.
THIRTY-ONE
ADRIENNE
Paris
July 15, 1789
“We need a leader, Madame de Lafayette.”
Having been roused from my bed, I now stood in the H?tel de Ville with the city’s elders, who cloistered around my husband’s bust—the one I helped dedicate years ago. Then, as now, I was asked to stand in Lafayette’s place. To answer in his name.
The king had refused to accept my husband’s declaration of rights and set foreign mercenaries against Paris. And now the citizenry was in rebellion and had dismantled the ancient fortress of the Bastille stone by stone. For the first time in my life, I had awakened to a Paris sky no longer dominated by the eight fortress towers that had for so long reminded us of the king’s absolute power. And I thought it an important lesson that though it takes many hands to build a prison, many hands can also take one apart . . .
But righteous fury was swiftly becoming disordered anarchy. Frightened and angry people, egged on by Philippe’s mischief-makers, had a wax head of the duc d’Orléans and were proclaiming him the new and rightful king. Was there no crisis Philippe would not try to turn to his advantage?
If my husband were here in Paris, he would put a stop to it. But he was still at Versailles. And now the city’s leaders were looking to me. “The people need a commander, Madame la marquise. Your husband turned citizens into soldiers in America; can he do it here? We have elected him in absentia to be commander of the new National Guard, but we cannot calm the people unless they know he will accept the appointment. You must tell us, if he can get to Paris, will Lafayette defend a sovereign people and restore public order?”
I put a hand to my mouth. I understood what was being asked. They wished to know if my husband would lead a new nation. They wished to know if he would be France’s George Washington. Yet they posed the question, by necessity, to me. And for Lafayette’s honor, whatever answer I gave must be true. I trembled at the responsibility. This was a mantle not easily taken up, and much harder to set down again. Still, everything Gilbert and I had done had led us to this point. And if I only quieted my own breath, I could hear the truth of his heart as my blood thrummed through it.