Page 8 of Beyond the Lavender Fields
Gilles turned his back on Père, catching a glimpse of his mother standing in the opposite doorway, hidden in the shadows, her eyes on the floor. How much of the argument had she heard? Everything said tonight they had contended about before. And yet her downcast face seared into his mind.
“Gilles.”
He would not have reacted to his father’s call, but he saw a flash of gold out of the corner of his eye. It spun through the air between them, and Gilles snatched it, trapping the token in his fist without looking at it. A warm hoop of metal. An earring like Père’s, perhaps? Plenty of captains wore them. Did he think a token of camaraderie would persuade him to reconsider?
Gilles shoved it into the pocket of his waistcoat. Père would be sorely disappointed. Nothing could make Gilles set foot onle Rossignol’s deck again. Ahead of him was the school at Montpellier and a life of service that mattered. He practically ran for the stairs, trying to relax his tense jaw before he broke a tooth. So much for being able to study tonight.
I did not seal the letter yet, and so I am writing a few more lines. There is room, and I am at a loss.
I’d forgotten my brother and father’s battles. Their contention seems to have increased since I’ve been away. I mentioned the government’s response to the issues in the grain market, and Émile’s teasing attitude (which he’s had since the incident with the Étienne boy) fled. He and Papa were instantly at arms, my father denouncing the failing economy and Émile those Frenchmen too cowardly to fight for a new government. I am surprised it did not come to blows. Maman sat in shock, staring helplessly between the two.
Émile left a moment ago, Maman thinks to the Étiennes’ home. I thought I hated the shouting, but the unearthly silence is worse. She tells me that more often than not, Émile and Maxence remove to cafés for most of the night when they visit, especially if both my father and the Étiennes’ father are at home. Though the captain is not aroyaliste, she tells me. Something else has turned the son against the father in that family.
I wish they had not called me back. At least in Paris I could imagine the revolution as a grand, national battle between age-old tradition and misguided innovation. Here, I see that it has infiltrated the one refuge I dreamed untouched by change. If the wave of revolution has corroded the very heart of this family, can I hope it will not destroy anything and everything it touches?
M. C.
Gilles sat cross-legged on his bed, his volume ofTraité des maladies chirurgicalescradled in his lap. But rather than ingesting Chopart’s knowledge about maladies of the head, Gilles’s eyes grazed over the words without his understanding them.
Two clashes in one day—one with Mademoiselle Daubin and one with Père—and in both he had come out looking the fool. Though he couldn’t banish the first from memory, he wouldn’t give the one with his father much thought—except for Maman’s dejection after the quarrel. She only wanted all her loved ones together, unharmed, and at peace. When had that happened last? Gilles had gone to sea at fourteen, then Maxence had given up the mariner’s life a year later, launching them both into their current wary relationship with Père.
Seven years of this tension in her home. How had Maman lived with it?
Gilles leaned back on his elbows. The new tallow candle his mother had placed in the holder beside his bed cast uncanny shadows about the dark room. Sounds from the street outside his window had mostly quieted, though in the Panier Quarter noise was common until quite late. His watch, sitting beside the simple but well-made candlestick, read ten o’clock. The Panier had quieted early tonight, especially given that tomorrow was a Sunday.
Not that Sundays held much importance anymore besides being a day without work. Since the new government had seized property from the Catholic Church and banished all nonconforming priests from their parishes, fewMarseillaisbothered to attend. Even Maman, who used to go to mass on her own each week, gave up after the new government-appointed clergymen took over.
Gilles closed his book and tossed it onto the bed. He would arise early to study tomorrow before breakfast. An hour of well-rested, focused study would do him more good than hours of distracted reading.
He rose from the bed. Below him in his brother’s room, he could hear Émile’s and Maxence’s voices mingled with the occasional clink of glass. Though their tones had been agitated when Émile had first arrived, they turned calm and jovial as the evening wore on. Gilles imagined they did this every night in Montpellier, when they were not out in cafés. Sometimes he joined them, but after the run-in with Émile’s sister this morning, Gilles wanted to keep his distance.
He rolled his head back and scrunched his eyes shut. What a fool. Girls had refused him before. Why did this instance refuse to leave his mind? Perhaps because she was his employer’s daughter? He would not discover until Monday whether his idiocy affected his standing with Monsieur Daubin.
Gilles pulled himself off his bed and wrapped his linen banyan around him. He did not need the extra covering for warmth in his top-floor bedroom during the late spring and summer months, but the ground floor tended to chill after dark. After snuffing the candle, he let himself out of the bedroom and down the stairs, taking care when passing Maxence’s room, though their brash laughter covered any sound he might have made. Were they laughing at his blundering mess from earlier? Gilles set his lips and pushed on to the kitchen.
The fire in the parlor had died down, and his father’s shadow that had overtaken the chair earlier in the evening had disappeared. Only a glimmer of light from the kitchen shone through the cramped dining room.
Maman sat on the bench beside the kitchen table, a tiny candle illuminating the mound of shirts and trousers beside her and the dying fire in the hearth. The candle was the same size as the one that had been in his room yesterday. She must have switched it so he wouldn’t run out of light while he studied.
A basin of water stood at her feet, and a needle glinted in the faint light as she worked. Mending and cleaning his father’s things, no doubt. “Gilles?” She did not turn from her task.
He entered and sat on the bench opposite her. She clipped a line of his father’s clumsy stitches with little scissors, then set about resewing the seam. “It is late to be mending,” Gilles noted. He laid his arms on the table and rested his chin on them.
“I might as well be useful if I am not sleeping.”
“You are the most useful woman in Marseille. And when you are upset, you are the most useful woman in France.”
The corners of her lips softened, and she finally looked at him. “You and your brother could flatter the barnacles off a ship’s hull. If only you put that talent to good use.”
Gilles cocked his head. “Good use? We put it to very good use.”
“Chasing the baker’s daughters for kisses is not good use, you sillycoquin.”
He winced. And especially not the daughters of soap makers.
His mother ended the seam, then clipped the tail of the thread. “I wonder at your being able to find a wife with your current methods.”
“It is fortunate for me that I am not in the market for a wife just yet.” He widened his eyes innocently. “You do not wish me to marry now, do you, Maman?”
