“Thank you,” Max said. He stood, bent over me, staring into my eyes with tenderness. “There is a farmhouse not far. We must try to locate a telephone, and I’ll find us a way back.”
I nodded, but didn’t move. Instead, I held up my hat to show him that shrapnel or sparks from the explosion had burned holes in the brim. “I might have been blinded . . .”
Instead, I felt I was seeing clearly for the first time in a long while.
I’d just been reminded what little beings we are—so ill matched against destiny. My tomorrows were not promised, but I desperately wanted today. “Kiss me, Maxime.”
A flicker of surprise behind his eyes sparked with an unspoken question. He’d want to know what this meant, where it would lead, what decisions must be made. I wanted to answer none of these questions, and to stop him from asking, my mouth closed upon his in reckless joy.
How long we clasped each other under that tree, I couldn’t say, for the clock of the universe now ticked to the time of our beating hearts. And I knew there would be no struggle against this hour of happiness, however long it might last.
FORTY-FIVE
ADRIENNE
Le Puy
September 1792
It was too generous to call the assemblage of armed men who arrested me soldiers, but they wore the tricolor cockades my husband had popularized at the start of the Revolution. There were some amongst them, at least, who still gave a care to duty, offering courteous hands to help me, my daughter, and Aunt Charlotte in and out of the carriage at our stops along the journey. “It’s the women of Chavaniac!” someone cried when we rolled into Le Puy. A mob formed around us, and a rock cracked against the glass window, causing my daughter to jolt. I squeezed her hand to keep her calm. And Anastasie did the same for Aunt Charlotte.
Not wanting either of them to see my fear, I stared straight ahead. Alas, this only inflamed the sans-culottes. Wearing red Phrygian caps, wielding pitchforks and pikes, they shouted, “Look at the aristocrats. Still so arrogant!”
My cheeks burned, because I’d never been called arrogant before. My gown was modest, bosom covered in a fichu made for me by local lacemakers from the school I had established. I wore no jewelry but my wedding ring and a small holy cross dangling from my neck—which I supposed would be counted against me in godless Paris, where blood flowed in the streets.
Another volley of stones slammed into the carriage, causing a shrill whinny from the agitated horses, and when the glass shattered, I yelped, hastily brushing shards away, even as they opened little cuts in my hands. I couldn’t understand how this could be happening. Not so long ago, the people of France called my husband the Hero of Two Worlds, the father of our new nation, and some called me its mother. Now people I didn’t know spewed torrents of abuse against me.
“If Lafayette were here, we’d tear out his bowels, so let his bitch be his substitute!”
My daughter’s hand tightened upon mine, and I felt the slick sweat of her fear. Seated across from us was a tenderhearted guardsman I’d known since his youth, and I saw his jaw was so tight he might crack his teeth. “My child is with me, sir,” I said, as if he could restore decency.
And he tried. He shouted at the mob out the shattered window to have a care for innocent ears. It made no difference. “Citizen,” they called back. “Her children are only parasites nurtured at her bosom.”
I should have prayed for the souls of anyone depraved enough to say such a thing, but indignation filled my heart. It’s barbarism to take vengeance upon the women, children, and elderly relations of public men. But barbarity had been unleashed in France by Philippe and the Jacobins. The sacrifices we made for liberté, égalité, fraternité were now wasted by these lawless criminals. Everything we honored was desecrated, every dream corrupted, every ideal defiled . . .
I gasped with relief when the soldiers somehow beat back the crowd, and our damaged carriage clacked its way down the stone road. It was not the end, by far, of the danger. A trembling worked its way into my knees, my mind scrambling for some way out of this situation. I tried to think what my husband would do. “Sir,” I whispered to the guardsman whose eyes brimmed with sympathy, “do you think it is possible I should find the means of escaping?”
Blanching, he could not meet my eyes. “It would not be possible for a person bearing your name . . .”
I knew what he was suggesting. The hope he was holding out. Half the aristocratic women I knew—amongst them even loving and religious wives—had divorced to keep their property or save their lives. Some renounced or even denounced their husbands. If I did the same, maybe I too could go free.