Page 81 of Beyond the Lavender Fields
4 September 1792
Panier Quarter
Marseille
Caroline,
I find myself with few words, all of which poorly express how I feel just now. I write simply to ask what I can do and to beg you to let me help you in this excruciating time. If all I can do is hide my adoration for the woman I love, hide the longing to once more hold you in my arms, so be it. I will do whatever you ask, no matter the sacrifice.
All my love,
Gilles
Gilles stared into his untouched coffee. The steam had dissipated several minutes ago while he pushed cool porridge around his bowl. Dishes clinked in the kitchen as Maman and Florence cleaned up from making breakfast.
“I’m surprised Daubin went for the offer,” Père was saying as he bit into a slab of toast. “I meant to haggle with him before coming to an agreement.”
Gilles lifted his spoon, letting thick clouds of porridge plop back into his bowl. Three weeks, and still that woman drove him to distraction. He should eat. He’d be needed at thesavonneriesoon. Had she received his note from two days ago? He’d received no response. Which should have been response enough.
“Did you read the papers this morning?”
Gilles raised his head as Père nudged a page across the table. Neither of them usually bothered with the newspapers. Martel always told Gilles what he needed to know. The bold print across the top of the page read: “The Purging of Paris.” He lowered his spoon. “What is this?”
The crafty twinkle that always resided in his father’s eye had vanished. “The national guard and thefédérésexecuted more than a thousand prisoners around Paris.”
A thousand. Gilles’s stomach lurched. “Counterrevolutionaries?”
“Some.” Père wrapped his fingers around his mug as though he needed to warm them. “There were priests, women, and children as well.”
Women and children? Gilles scanned the text before him to push out the nightmarish image of Caroline being among that number. Not that she was anywhere near Paris, but as news spread through Marseille ... The sinking in his belly increased as he read on. No wonder the Valois family tried to escape, if tensions around Paris were escalating to this.
“Marat is calling for the provinces to follow suit,” Gilles mumbled as he read. “He wants theroyalistesexterminated.” The Jacobin politician Jean-Paul Marat had always taken the most severe approaches on how to deal with counterrevolutionaries. He regularly called for blood, but Gilles couldn’t fathom an execution on this scale. Few, if any, of these people could have received a proper trial.
“Your brother would have been there.”
Gilles nodded slowly. He’d almost gone as well. Now there were calls for a second battalion offédérésto march for Paris. Martel would insist they go.
“There is always room for you onle Rossignol.” Père stood, taking up his mug and empty plate.
For the first time in years, the call of the sea wrenched at Gilles’s soul. A calm morning on empty waters cleared even the most troubled mind. The ocean had a way of making someone forget the cares waiting on land.
Gilles should have bristled at the tedious offer. Instead, he nodded without meeting Père’s gaze. Even given the deal Père had made with Daubin to purchase soaps for his next voyage, thesavonneriedid not have much promise past the end of the year. Therévolutionnairegovernment had allowed the medical school at Montpellier to remain open because of its worth to society, but who knew how long that would last?
Père made for the kitchen, leaving Gilles in the stillness of the dining room. Gilles let the newspaper flutter to the table and dropped his head into his hand. Outside the window, a bird called to its friends, oblivious of the disasters unfolding on personal and public scales in the human world around it.
If he did return to the sea, he would not spend each day hoping Caroline would walk through the door. And that in itself could be worth the price.
Gilles picked at the cloth covering the table. For perhaps the first time, he couldn’t see a clear path before him. Each way seemed clouded by the fog of doubt or strewn with the debris of broken plans. None of the roads called to him. If anything, they all attempted to dissuade him. Where was he to find that place of belonging? He’d never felt this uncertain before.
8 September 1792
I do not know why I continue to write to you each day. I sit here with eight folded letters displayed on my desk, all of them addressed to you, even though I know you will never read them. How I wish there were some way you could get word to us that you are safe, but I know that to be impossible for now. I don’t allow myself much time to consider any other possibilities except that you, my brother, my aunt, and my uncle are safe and very far from this purgatory they still have the audacity to call France.
A letter from Gilles sits with the rest. It’s more of a note, in truth. I wish desperately to answer it and wish to throw it in the hearth all at once. Gilles didn’t put Émile up to joining thefédérés. I’m not so blinded by grief as to give in to mindless blaming. No, I hold the Jacobin Club fully responsible for the nonsense and lies they tell their worshipers. Gilles is one of them, even if he is more civil and understanding than the rest. In the end, he will not renounce his unfeeling comrades.
Oh, Sylvie, how did I allow myself into this mess again? Did I not learn with Nicolas? I did learn. I knew it would never work. And yet my heart pleaded that this time was different. Gilles is not so fiery as Nicolas in his defense of the revolution, but he has always believed in it.
The revolution took Émile from me forever. It has taken Guillaume, and who knows for how long? Not to mention you, my dearest friend and cousin. It is taking my family’s livelihood, as Papa admitted to us this evening. My religion. My faith in human kindness. Will I have anything left when the ash settles? Or will this strife reduce our beloved France to blackened heaps of rubble on a barren wasteland?
