That is how our guide found us after parking the motor and finding the concierge, who, upon introduction, made a sweeping bow to Emily. “Bonjour, Baroness . . .” Emily was now above me in social station by virtue of noble title, and that was going to take some getting used to.
The groundskeeper spoke with accented French that I couldn’t make out. “Bats,” Clara translated. “There’s a colony of them in the attic. Some come down through a crack in the ceiling. That will have to be repaired straightaway . . .”
Emily dutifully added that to our list of planned renovations. We would also need to add electricity and running water. Meanwhile, I was eager to explore, bats or no. Brandishing my parasol, I said, “Into the breach . . .”
Entering the chateau, we found that despite the family’s attempts to buy back many of their belongings after looting during the French Revolution, the whole house still remained sparsely furnished.
I was charmed to find, in the apartments that had belonged to the hero’s wife, several game tables by the fireplace, where I imagined Adrienne must have played with her children. Would she be pleased to see children play here again? I hoped so. There was much to explore, from the kitchen where guardsmen and servants used to take their meals to the little blue-painted chamber where Lafayette sat at his desk and did his writing. That was to say nothing of the secret tunnels . . .
“There is a rumor they lead out to the village; another that they lead to the water’s edge,” Clara translated.
“Goodness,” I said. “What an adventure!”
However, I didn’t have a hat suitable for spelunking.
The library was a shambles—the floors rotted away and the walls crumbling. But the philosopher’s hall with busts of the thinkers Lafayette admired was intact, and a charming room at the top of one of the towers where a chandelier now hung was perfectly habitable.
Lafayette’s bedchamber had been kept pristine.
The wood floor creaked under my feet as I took in the faded red toile. Did the Revolutionary general choose this himself? Pictures and portraits still hung upon the wall, little items on the mantelpiece that might have amused the great man. The room having been kept as a veritable shrine by the family, the chamberlain explained that he had made it ready for the baroness with fresh linens.
“Oh, no,” Emily said, embarrassed. “The honor should go to Mrs. Chanler.”
“The bed is big enough for two,” I said. “It isn’t the Ritz, but what romantic dreams we’ll have!”
This was going to be a greater enterprise than I had ever dreamed. We’d need a staff—a housekeeper, housemaid, and gardener at the very least—to put the house back to rights, and a curator for the museum. For the orphanage, we’d need a school, a headmaster, teachers for the children, a physician to tend them, seamstresses to sew their clothes, and farmers to tend the sheep and perhaps raise crops to keep them fed.
First, however, we’d need to hire architects, because the chateau would have to be repaired and reinforced. Of course, that would take time. Time that homeless children like Marthe did not have . . .
Clara blew out a long stream of cigarette smoke. “It would be faster to build something new.”
“You’re right.” I lit upon an idea. “You’re exactly right. Which is why we’re going to build a new addition.”
The chamberlain winced as if I intended a desecration, but I was convinced this was nothing Lafayette would have opposed. He was, after all—like me—a person for progress. And I felt certain this was work I was born to do.
FORTY-TWO
MARTHE
Chavaniac-Lafayette
November 1942
“Do you, Marthe Simone, take Yves Jér?me Travert . . .”
The mayor is droning on, dragging out the civil ceremony like it’s a love match.
Anna has been trying to talk me out of this wedding for weeks, but the only way she could stop me is to say she’s jealous, or that she wants me for herself, and that’s just a fantasy. This morning, zipping me into the white gown I wore to the gala all those years ago—still the prettiest dress I own—she said, “Don’t marry someone just to get out of being conscripted into the STO! The Vichy government isn’t going to force women to go to work for Germany—Papa says it would turn the whole country against them.”
“The whole country is already turning against them.”
I couldn’t tell her that I have better reasons to marry Travert. For one thing, he helped me make an entirely new set of false documents for the Kohn children to keep them from being rounded up with foreign Jews. He suggested a new place of birth—some town where a fire had wiped out the records. To make the whole thing more authentic, I used a second stamp to show a change in domicile. The more stamps, the more convincing, Travert said; police assume the papers have been checked by numerous authorities. I kept the name Beaufort, because everyone at the preventorium already knows Gabriella, and Travert said my work would fool most gendarmes.