Thus, that afternoon, we delivered the ambulance to the American Hospital in Neuilly, where we learned some manner of defense to poison gas had been devised. Handkerchiefs or cotton gauze dipped in water—or, even better, urine—counteracted the chlorine, explained Mesdames Simon and LeVerrier gave us a tour.
Hearing this, Emily and I decided that we would include cloths in our Lafayette kits from now on. The chief doctor had received us personally, making a fuss over our presence in the wards, which were filled with soldiers who had been ferried back from the front. “We’re grateful for the ambulance, and for your company, Mrs. Chanler. We’re so well acquainted with your husband, after all.”
I gave him a grateful smile. “Yes, well, Mr. Chanler isn’t an easy patient. I’m sure he left quite an impression last year.”
“Last year?” The physician chuckled. “He’s been here nearly every day.”
That was a surprise. It lessened my resentment to think Willie was occupying himself with hospital work. The way volunteers from even the wealthiest class of people rushed about, doing every sort of chore, made me wonder if my husband had simply been too busy to write.
Certainly the nurses, weary from changing dressings and sheets, had time for only the simplest fare all day. Fruit, war bread, and butter—not even a strong tea to perk them up. Something that, I decided, simply must be remedied. I might not have known how to properly dress a man’s face when it had been half blown away, but I could bring tea, soup, and sandwiches for the nurses who did.
And I would learn. It was a fight against nature not to recoil from faces with only gaping nostrils for noses, and with exposed jawbones—teeth shining like a skeleton in living men. In order to make sense of these ghastly visages, I imagined them as ancient sculptures in some vandalized state. And my sculptor’s fingers pined to tenderly add clay to fill in the missing parts so these men would be whole again. “I’ll return tomorrow.”
“Me too,” said Miss Sloane.
It was settled, then. Until the two young soldiers about whom we were most concerned could get their permissions, we’d make ourselves useful. Perhaps we might even run into my husband. But as it happened, Willie wasn’t at the hospital the next day when we brought much-appreciated tea trays with dainties. It wasn’t until I returned to the hotel that night that I received his curious message, which read like it was sent from a man on the run from the law:
Meet me at noon at Maxim’s restaurant, and come alone.
TWELVE
ADRIENNE
Paris
March 1777
I was now the wife of a fugitive.
To stop Lafayette from boarding the ship to America that he had secretly commissioned, my father made good on his threat, securing a lettre de cachet. By order of the king, my husband was to be arrested on sight. Every seaport in France was on the lookout, as was every patrol at the border. Stopping me on my way to Mass, the duc d’Ayen said, “Pray Lafayette is arrested. If he is caught before he sets sail for America, there may yet be some chance of preserving our family from the king’s anger.”
Yet the family he wished to preserve went to war with itself, battle lines drawn by generation. To the old men in my family, the idea of British redcoats being driven back by ill-clad rebels was a source of amusement, but they were incensed at my husband’s rebellion. They scurried to Versailles to denounce and all but disown Lafayette.
Meanwhile, my mother, my sisters, and my brother-in-law all praised Gilbert’s actions.
I knew that if Gilbert were dragged home in chains, he might never recover. And this would hurt my children as well as me. So despite my pain at his leaving, I had to find a way to help him escape France.
I commissioned Marc to send word to his young officer friends to look the other way if they should happen upon my husband at the border. I begged lady friends at court to help Gilbert if he should seek shelter with their families. I was sure to be seen in my carriage riding through Paris, or walking in the public gardens, to put the lie to any rumor of my having fallen ill. Most important—if only for the sake of my unborn child—I willed myself to remain calm.
“Drink,” Grand-mère said one afternoon, pressing an extraordinary cup into my hands and lowering her scratchy old voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s holy water. I mixed it in a sacred chalice and prayed to the Virgin Mary for a boy.”
“Oh, Grand-mère, for shame!” I cried, knowing a chalice had recently gone missing after vespers from a nearby church. How had she taken it without any of us noticing?