Season of Light (34 page)

Another silence in the little cell, penetrated by a weak call from a bird in the garden. ‘Perhaps she has left him,’ said Asa, faltering. ‘Perhaps she is dead and that is why he sent for me.’

Beatrice said nothing, but the professor leaned forward and rested his hand on Asa’s knee. ‘You are clutching at straws, mademoiselle. Can you not see that at the very least he has been unfaithful to his promises? All these years you have been waiting for him to send for you and marry you. But you have come to France in pursuit of a chimera, a boy you used to know who has changed beyond recognition. Only one thing, perhaps, is the same; the manner in which he wrote to you, thoughtlessly and probably on a whim. That, at least, is typical of Didier.’

Asa found that she could receive this news quite calmly, could keep her head up and endeavour not to look like a jilted woman. She realised that she had been braced for something of the kind, after all, and remembered how the housekeeper had watched her face as she talked about Estelle Beyle’s portrait of Didier.

‘What are you suggesting I should do?’ she asked quietly. ‘I have no friends in France apart from you, and no money.’

Beatrice tucked a cloth over the contents of her basket and tied on her hat. Her father picked up John Morton’s letter as if satisfied that the discussion had ended satisfactorily. ‘Write to your brother-in-law and tell him where you are and that you are safe. Until he replies, which may take a while given the war, you can stay with Beatrice. ‘We shall also make enquiries of the English community in Le Havre who might offer you better protection than we can until a crossing has been organised.’ He got up and extended his chilly hand to Asa. ‘We shall not meet again, mademoiselle. May I apologise one last time, on behalf of my son. And wish you a safe journey home to England.’

On the wearisome trek back to Caen Beatrice was very quiet and kept herself apart from Asa so that not even their elbows touched. From a distance, the town was a multitude of spires piercing a lustrous sky; in silhouette it might have been mistaken for a pre-revolutionary, reverential place.

‘Thank you for taking me to see your father,’ said Asa.

‘I visit him nearly every day. Sometimes, if he’s unwell, I am allowed to sleep in his cell.’

‘How long since he was arrested?’

‘Four months, approximately.’

‘You must be exhausted.’

‘I do my duty.’

They walked on in silence for several minutes. ‘You’re suggesting, I think,’ said Asa, ‘that perhaps I have done the opposite of my duty in coming to France.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that … although it is true that you don’t seem to be governed by duty and obedience in the way most women are.’

‘I thought I was – until I met Didier. It seemed to me, when I fell in love with him, that I had no choice.’

‘Certainly I have never felt as strongly for anyone as you have for Didier. I’ve never been tempted to question what is expected of me. Besides, we were all very serious in the old days. Religion and politics are what interested us and we pretended we didn’t care so much about love.’

‘And yet this Estelle Beyle certainly loved your brother.’

‘Estelle was different.’

‘In what way?’

‘None of us was ever really allowed to love anyone she loved. Even her brother. She would much rather have kept him to herself. She used to watch us all the time, in case we took a part of him she didn’t want to give away.’

‘And the brother?’

‘You mean, did he mind? Nobody could ever own Jean, not even Estelle. That’s why she tried to keep him so close. He had a vocation to the priesthood. Before the Revolution, I used to think I was called to the religious life too, probably because of him.’

‘And now? What do you hope for now?’ Asa asked gently.

‘Now the convents have closed and my family is divided by politics, so what choices are left to me? On the one hand, there is Didier’s rapid rise in government, on the other my father’s imprisonment. Not only have my father and brother been taken from me, so has my life. Haven’t you noticed how quiet the house is? Few people come near us now, for fear of being caught on the wrong side.’

With every step the sunset deepened; the sky ahead grew rosier and the air at long last was a little cooler as an evening breeze wafted in from the sea.

‘What about Didier’s mistress, Estelle,’ said Asa, ‘was she religious too?’

‘Fanatical. But she had her own religion. It wasn’t to do with God but with Didier and the Revolution. If I’m honest I always felt a little lonely when we were together because she came between me and my brother. She was very funny, lively and talented, but she could also be cruel. She knew my weaknesses and sometimes her tongue would lash out and demolish me.’

‘And yet Didier loves her.’

‘They had a strange relationship. She tormented him and teased him, yet when she wasn’t around he missed her. When Estelle’s brother went to the seminary, she was needed at home to help look after her younger brothers and sisters and the family business. Didier took to going to the Beyles’ house for dinner, or he and Estelle would go walking in the summer evenings. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d persuaded him to marry her by now – it’s what she always wanted. Believe me, mademoiselle, you should go back to England. Estelle Beyle has had her clutches on Didier for as long as I can remember. Now that she has him, she won’t let go.’ The following day, while Beatrice went to visit her father, Asa began her letter home, but after an hour or so, unable to find appropriate words, she offered to work in the garden for Madame Vadier. Tools were kept in a hut beside the vegetable patch and the housekeeper watched disparagingly as Asa jabbed at the hard soil with a trowel. In the end she tut-tutted with irritation, disappeared into the house and came back with a bucket of currants for Asa to top and tail. ‘You can’t go wrong with these.’

A blackbird perched on a ramshackle arch and the lilies nodded their wilting heads as Asa sat on a bench under the silver birch and pulled off stalks between the tines of a fork. Estelle Beyle. Didier Paulin. Jean Beyle. Beatrice Paulin. Each name was a currant falling softly into the colander.

Enter Charlotte Corday, who flung herself down in a flounce of cotton petticoats and tossed her untidy hair behind her shoulders. ‘I couldn’t find anyone in the house so I came out here. Where’s Beatrice? Usual place, I suppose.’

Though she didn’t offer to help, Charlotte watched the movements of Asa’s fork and occasionally picked up a stray currant and dropped it into the wrong container. ‘Today there’s to be a review of the militia. They’re hoping more people will volunteer to march on Paris. Will you come into the town and help me cheer them on?’

‘Do you really think many will turn out?’

‘Of course they will. We expect thousands to join once it’s clear they mean business. How can anyone hold back when the freedom of France is at stake?’

‘Perhaps they don’t really know what they are being called to fight for.’

‘Of course they do. We have to resist domination from Paris. Marat, Danton and Robespierre are evil men. Did you know they’ve set up a so-called Committee of Public Safety to make rules designed to crush us all? You wouldn’t understand because you are not French’ – this was voiced as a reproach – ‘You can’t know how we feel.’

‘I want to understand, though.’

‘The point is that I supported the Revolution from the outset. You might think that odd, given that my family were
aristocrats
’ – the word spoken in a whisper. ‘We had quite a bit to lose, but France was bankrupt and we wanted to save our people from abject poverty. So we did want change, but we wanted change to be peaceful. We had no idea that such monsters were waiting in the wings …’

‘But some things are better, surely? At least there are no more peasants starving while the landowners take all the wealth. At least the country is ruled by an elected body …’

‘… of lawyers. That’s not what we wanted. They know nothing. Look what they’ve done to our churches and our religious men and women. Everything has changed for the worse.’

Another currant went rolling under a stone. Charlotte darted forward to retrieve it.

‘Tell me what it was like in the old days, in Caen,’ said Asa.

‘Oh, I didn’t live here when I was very small. I was brought up several miles to the south, in quite a large house – my grandfather actually owned a chateau with a moat, though of course we don’t admit to that any more. After my mother died I was sent to school here. That’s how I know the Paulins. Beatrice and I were both educated at the Abbaye des Dames. I was a boarder, of course, she wasn’t. But that’s all gone now.’

‘What do you mean, gone?’

‘Exactly that. Gone. Oh, the building is still there, but after the Revolution they threw out the nuns – even my dear abbess, Madame de Pontecoulant, who was like a mother to me after my own died. They turned the abbey into a warehouse for animal fodder, can you imagine, and now the nuns’ quarters are barracks.’

‘I’m sorry, Charlotte.’

‘We could go there, if you like. I could show you. Please, come out with me. We’re wasting so much time. First we’ll go to La Place St-Sauveur and watch the troops. It’s barely a five-minute walk.’

‘I can’t go. I have this work to do.’

‘Oh, come on. There’s so much to see. How can you bear to be stuck here?’

There was no sign of Madame Vadier and the currants were all but done. Charlotte, who appeared to be familiar with every nook of the Paulin house, led Asa through a side gate and into the front courtyard, where chanting could be heard from the crowd assembled a couple of streets away. She was quite right; the people of Caen were out in force, the militia and the Carabots in their white sashes, high hats and polished boots. From a distance at least they gave the impression of discipline, their muskets catching the sun, the soles of their boots resounding against the cobbles as they marched in front of the shrouded guillotine. The townspeople cheered, a brass band played, crepe sellers drizzled lemon on to hot pancakes and thrust them into children’s hands. Calvados, even at mid-morning, flowed, and the air was filled with the scent of fermented apple and fried batter.

Speakers lined up to extol the men of Caen for their bravery and exhort them to cast aside their doubts, even at this late hour. The soldiers shifted under the hot sun as perspiration darkened the backs of their tunics. Asa, remembering the professor’s prediction that Caen’s rebellion would be crushed, wondered whether the two representatives from Paris interred in the castle a few hundred yards from this spot could hear the bands and the marching. At the end of the parade General Wimpffen, who was to lead the forces out of Caen, stepped forward, accompanied by a drum-roll. The fringes of his epaulettes bouncing on his shoulders, he marched up and down the rows of militia, ordering volunteers to step forward and undertake the historic task of saving their city. At first Asa anticipated the smart stamping of hundreds of feet, but after a long pause only a single, stooped man shuffled out of line, then another, tall, thin and sheepish, and another, until there were seventeen in all.

Charlotte groaned. ‘If I were a man nothing would stop me marching on Paris. What is the matter with them?’

‘If this small army from Caen fails,’ murmured Asa, ‘what then? Won’t there be terrible retribution?’

‘Possibly, but we’re ready for that. We’ve had enough. Come on, I’m sick of this; I’ll take you to the
abbaye
. Then you’ll understand.’

It was a long walk under the castle walls and deep into the maze of old streets to the east of town. ‘Caen is full of churches,’ said Charlotte, clutching Asa’s arm and lowering her voice, ‘it’s a very holy place, and was once very wealthy because of the lace and silk and other textiles that used to be traded here; the lace has all gone, of course, because nobody is allowed to wear it. And there were two abbeys. It’s a standing joke in Caen that the abbeys were built on either side of the city because back in the eleventh century the Pope could not bear that William, who became king of England, insisted on marrying his cousin Matilda. As a punishment William had to build not one abbey but two, one for men and one for women, separated by the castle. Yet, as sure as night follows day, those educated in one often end up falling in love with someone from the other.’

‘Did you fall in love, Charlotte?’

‘Often, but never for long. We were all in love with Didier, needless to say. But he and Beatrice were very close, so it was difficult to get his attention, and then there was Estelle, who managed to attach herself to him even though her family was in trade. I wasn’t really part of their set, being a boarder, but sometimes I went to supper at the Paulins’ house. I often felt left out because I didn’t have a brother. But that also meant I wasn’t always in a boy’s shadow like Estelle and Beatrice.’

‘It doesn’t sound to me as if Estelle was in her brother’s shadow.’

‘Oh, but she was. Or not his shadow exactly. Rather she was intent on fighting for a perfect world in which she could possess both her brother the priest, and her lover, Didier. When she couldn’t manage to keep either of them it made her anxious and impossibly moody.’

At the top of the hill loomed the two colonnaded towers of the Abbaye des Dames. Charlotte went boldly to the door and rattled the handle. ‘Locked, of course. It never used to be. Have a peek through the keyhole, you might be able to see what it’s like inside.

‘In the old days I was keeper of an abbey key. The one I held was for the door leading to the convent. It was wrought with a couple of twos, back to front, to form a heart. I was very fond of the weight of it hanging from my waist. The lock was kept very well oiled; I remember how easily the key slid in and the lovely clunk of the latch when I turned it. I would swing open the door and let the nuns through. The abbess always smiled at me.’

‘You say that Beatrice used to come to school here too.’

‘That’s right. And look. Can you see, across the town, that cluster of steeples belonging to the Abbaye des Hommes? Every morning when they left the house, Didier used to walk one way and Beatrice the other, exactly as the Pope had decreed all those centuries ago.’