But here in the village, the mood is exultant, like it’s a Christmas miracle. The curé risks saying a blessing for our maquisards, and for the first time in a long time, people are willing to say aloud what they really think. At least a little bit. After the service, Anna draws me into a warm hug. “Merry Christmas, Marthe,” she breathes into my ear, quietly confiding that after the late-night réveillon, she and Madame LeVerrier are going to hide Lafayette’s letters and trinkets and other valuables in the museum, in case the Germans come to seize it as punishment for the stolen statue.
Fortunately, hiding rings and snuffboxes and historical papers isn’t illegal; it’s not dangerous like hiding pistols. It’s still something, though, so I hug her tight, proud of her, smiling at the familiar scent of her perfume.
But I don’t return to the castle with her for the réveillon. I know she wants me to go with her, but for once I’d rather go with Travert, even if he’s sour-tempered and surly with me. As soon as we’ve latched the wooden door, I kiss him, and instead of cooking our dinner, I keep kissing him until the heat of our bodies overtakes the heat of his anger. Then I draw him to the quilted bed, where so many of our silent conversations take place.
Afterward, he asks, “Do you think of her, when we’re together like this?”
Normally I’d bristle at a question like that, but tonight I tease. “Why—do you want to know if you fixed me? That’s what men think, isn’t it? That a good romp between the sheets sets a woman straight.”
But Yves says, “I don’t think it works that way.”
“It doesn’t. But no, I don’t think of her when we’re together like this.”
I don’t think of much of anything when we’re together like this. It’s easy to be with him. For a year now, his body—thick neck, broad shoulders, wide back—has been a fallow field of forgetting where I bury everything I don’t want to feel. But I think maybe now something is growing in that soil.
FIFTY-SIX
BEATRICE
Chavaniac
July 1918
Having parted with Willie, I was now a free woman, but while the war raged on, where better to enjoy my liberty than Chavaniac? “Welcome back, Madame President,” said the castle’s steward, taking my luggage. Already I could see that the changes wrought since my last visit were nothing short of miraculous. Paved roads now led to the castle, where an entirely new wing had been constructed for the children and employees while restoration work continued in the castle proper.
A new school and medical facility could now boast of electricity and indoor plumbing . . . and though the library remained a scene of disaster, with rotted floorboards and a collapsed fireplace, the walls had been reinforced and the roof repaired. All this was accomplished in record time.
Some work had been performed by German prisoners of war—which seemed fair under the circumstances—but we were also aided by passing American soldiers, an entire company of whom were, even now, at work with shovels and pickaxes. The sight of these sturdy doughboys stirred my heart, as I imagined it might stir Lafayette’s heart too were he here to see it. These were the great-grandsons of the generation of Americans he fought beside, here to rescue Europe and restore his home to glory . . .
As a black cat wound itself around her ankles like a familiar, Clara said, “We’ve adopted some feline friends to help with our bats.”
A welcome solution. Inside the castle, the historic furniture and facsimiles thereof that I’d managed to acquire were kept free of dust by the housekeeper and six housemaids. We also had three gardeners, four teachers, and two cooks to feed the eighty-five children who now slept peacefully beneath our terra-cotta rooftops. Among them darling Marthe, who was, according to the staff, a two-and-a-half-year-old terror in flaxen pigtails.
“She has much to say,” reported Marie-Louise LeVerrier, who had dedicated her life to this place in the past year. “She’s a very bright girl and quite the mistress of this domain.”
“Is that so?”
By way of example, Clara Simon explained that on the Fourth of July holiday there’d been a scuffle between the children who had been living here and those newly arrived. We’re the real children of Lafayette, taunted the former. Which sent the latter crying to the staff to see if this were true. That’s when precocious Marthe told them they were all Lafayette kids.
Oh, how I loved this story! Eager for a reunion, I found little Marthe sitting at a picnic table in the courtyard, drawing with wax crayons under the supervision of Marie-Louise. The girl blinked up with those steel blue eyes, and as I slid into the bench beside her, I was astonished at how she’d grown. “I don’t suppose you remember me.”