I am coming, Maman!
Good-bye, my beloved children. Good-bye, Gilbert . . .
It was the thought of Gilbert that stopped me. My children might be safer when I was dead, but not Gilbert. The rumors that he had gone mad in his prison cell, torn out his own eyes . . . I had not believed them. But if I stopped my heart, would it stop his too? Perhaps I was the only hope he had of survival.
Don’t think, Adrienne. Just jump. The temptation was stronger than I could have ever fathomed. Stronger than almost any other urge of my life. Stronger than thirst, hunger, or lust. Shame and grief are more powerful than anything . . . but love.
It was love that made me step back from the window. Perhaps tomorrow I would fling myself into the sweet freedom of the hereafter, but not today. Instead, I passed my days in blackness. I did not eat. I did not drink. I did not sleep. Nor did I wish to speak to those who came to offer comfort. I was scarcely interested when a guard said I had a visitor. I was only curious when he said, “It’s la belle Américaine.”
I emerged from my prison cell dazed and blinking, not knowing what day it was, much less the identity of the mysterious visitor who could have charmed Paris into giving her this sobriquet. A waiting carriage behind her, the dark-haired beauty stood at the gates in splendor—a beautiful topaz cross glittering from her neck. How shabby I felt in my unlaundered garment, my hair a nest of straw. Yet without the slightest hesitation, this stranger reached for my dirty hands and grasped them warmly. She introduced herself as Elizabeth Kortright Monroe, wife of the new American ambassador. “It is my great honor to meet the wife of Lafayette, a hero who shed his blood in the cause of liberty . . .”
She said this in such a manner to be overheard by the guards and passersby. And terrified that even one more person should endanger themselves by uttering the word Lafayette, I whispered, “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Yet I did,” said Mrs. Monroe with a kind expression. She explained that with Robespierre dead, there was some chance now of a legitimate government. “Can I bring you food, a blanket, or some means of comfort?”
“Oh, madame,” I said, my throat swelling with emotion. “Bring me news of my children and my husband. That is all I need.”
My visitor’s dark eyes glistened. “I will make inquiries about your children. Your husband’s situation is unchanged, but I have hope of changing yours. Though forbidden from making any official plea on your behalf, Mr. Morris hinted to the Committee of Public Safety that your death would greatly offend American sentiment and might put our alliance into peril.”
So it was to Mr. Morris that I owed my life. The prickly peg-legged debauchee had gone as far as he dared, possibly in contradiction of his orders. Now his successor was prepared to go further. “Mr. Monroe intends to publicize that he has a personal sympathy in your cause, as he fought with Lafayette at the Battle of the Brandywine.”
Monroe. The name came back to me from all those years ago, when Gilbert boasted of his comrades-at-arms. The brave young Virginian who stayed with him when he’d been wounded—without God, could fortune have turned in such a way that the very same soldier was now here in France?
“Mr. Monroe is tireless in his advocacy,” she was saying. “So I beg you to have courage.”
He should not risk it, I thought, still longing for oblivion. How would I ever again be fit for life when my every thought was poisoned? You were the death of your family, Adrienne. Your affections, your ideals, your opinions, fatal to those who had the misfortune to love you . . .
I did not speak these words, and yet I believe Mrs. Monroe somehow saw them upon my countenance, for she brought her face close to the bars. “Madame, do not forget the obligations that still bind you to this world.”
The next day I was sent to a new prison. Then another. And another. I did not know if this was done to save me or punish me. Having no fire, I shivered violently beneath a pile of rags, my breath frosting the air, little crystals of ice glistening on the wall. The cold was so painful I welcomed the slow creep of numb sleep over my senses.
For when I closed my eyes, I saw Chavaniac.
There, beneath the frost-capped towers, my children might be playing games in the snow, free to laugh, to worship as they wished, to speak according to their consciences. There the little church bell might be ringing to summon the faithful, there might be a blazing fire by which I could read, surrounded by my husband’s books and busts of his favorite thinkers. A ham would be roasting in the oven, and I would find Gilbert in his treasure room, working on plans to improve the place, working on new ideas to improve the world. He would take me into his strong arms and—