Despite the Angels (18 page)

They got back up onto the carts and into the carriages and made slow progress up the hill towards the church. The little shrine seemed deserted, but from his better vantage point on horseback Daniel could see the priest, stretched out on the ground in the shade beside his tent, his head on the book and the flagon lying on its side on the sand. He sighed. It had been a short mass. He hoped that it would work and that his mother would get her value and also that she would not notice the sleeping priest. He spurred his horse on, back the way they had come.

The party stopped again at the little chapel and walked around the side of it, to a large open meadow, down the edge of which there was a row of shady trees. The rugs were laid under the largest tree, the table was set up and at last the food could be unpacked. Eloise chose a place on the rugs and listened to the wind in the leaves above her.

“The wind is making a lovely sound, Monsieur, listen. Gentle. I did not like the sound of the sea, it was too big. I do not want to see it again.”

“No, we will stay away from it in future. But we should never forget that it brought us together, never forget its power. Its power…” Daniel fell silent as he felt the hairs on his spine rise in a ripple that ran up to the back of his neck. He looked at Eloise in sudden concern and knelt beside her, raising her hand to his lips. Her hazel eyes looked into his, puzzled, then she smiled and squeezed his fingers a little as he let go.

“Oh Sir, you should not blame the sea. It was you and your flower that really had the power over me. I would not have been there at the sea with you if it had not been for that flower and the dancing!” Their hands had just met again when Madame deVrac’s voice broke through their self absorption with enquiries about their preferences for duck breast or leg and a complaint about the cheese having been stored on its side.

“I do not know, really, what these servants are thinking of sometimes. That lovely cheese has leaked all over the fruit. Such a waste.”

“Just as well really,” whispered Daniel to Eloise, “if it had not, she would have been berating us for unseemly behaviour in front of the servants!” He squeezed her hand and got up to help with the food and mollify his mother.

Eloise, alone for a moment, picked up Marie-Claire and spoke softly to her.

“My precious little one, I will protect you always, for ever. You do not need to fear that big rough sea, you are never going near it again. I am going to keep you safe.” Marie-Claire slept on, comfortable in the warm shade.

Eloise sat in the shade, nibbling at the pastries spread out on the table and sipping a glass of rich red wine. Her fingers were still greasy from the confit and cheese and she rubbed them with the stiff linen napkin. Her eyes closed, and she could hear more clearly the musicians clattering about as they got out their instruments, the ladies and gentlemen chatting, laughing, and in one case snoring, and the servants gossiping as they packed away the leftovers. She could distinguish very little, but because they were village people and spoke in her dialect, the odd word came through with startling clarity. As she drifted on the edge of sleep she heard ‘Nicholas ….anger…Nantes ….Paris …….cousin ...trouble …….good man’ and her mind drifted back to her childhood, when her brother’s friend Nicholas had teased her, catching her hands and swinging her round, telling her it was only a matter of time and she would dance with him, to his tune. I wonder why Luc liked him, why he never asked him to stop? It seemed he had assumed that if he liked Nicholas, I must too. Of course, if Nicholas had behaved like all the other boys in the village, I would have liked him better, maybe even enough to dance with him, or more. But that air of ownership he put on, that was unattractive. As though I had no mind of my own. Well, I showed him I have a mind, when I danced with Daniel. Though I didn’t dance with Daniel to show Nicholas anything, I wasn’t thinking of him at all. So why am I thinking of him now? He does not matter to me.

“Not directly, you’re right. But get Daniel to listen when he comes to talk to him. Everyone will be happier if they hear each other, including Luc and your father.”

Eloise opened her eyes and looked around, puzzled. Then she saw Daniel holding out his hand to her and heard the music starting up. She jumped to her feet and under the shade of the big trees the dancing started.  Eloise found her feet moving with the music and she threw herself into the dance, enjoying the turning and circling of it, catching the hands that were held out to her, letting go, weaving the pattern to and fro. She began to smile and then to grin and by the time the circle had moved her round to Daniel again, she was laughing aloud. Daniel matched his steps to hers and moved her out of the group into the sunshine. They danced circles around each other, slow and stately, in rhythm to the music. They locked eyes and laughed again, not knowing why they were suddenly so happy, but not caring.

They were brought back to the present by Madame, calling them back into the shade, back to the proper behaviour of the gentry.  

At the salt marshes, Nicholas was scraping the thin layer of salt to the side of the section and his cousin Jean-Marc was lifting the little pile into a small sack. They were sweating in the afternoon heat.

“This is slow work,” Jean-Marc said, as he wiped his streaming face again, “it would be quicker just to sweat into the bag and squeeze it out. And it would be pure white salt off us, not this cowardly stuff. What makes it that colour anyway? Who ever heard of yellow salt!”

“It is the way it is here. I suppose it must be because the silt underneath it is yellow.” Nicholas stretched across to gather the last thin scraping of crystals, being careful not to gather the mud underneath. “We get less for it than if it was white, of course. The cheese makers over in Cantal like it, their cheese is yellow anyway. But it is hard to sell privately, you know what I mean?” Nicholas winked at his cousin, “though I do keep a bit the nuns never know about.”

“The nuns sell to the cheesemakers for you, then?”

“Yes, and take half of the money. And the taxes are terrible. That is why I keep some back.”

“It is the only way the common man can survive. It is the same in Nantes. Maybe when the summer is over and things calm down, I can find you a market there. Can you get the colour out of the salt?”

“I don’t know. I never thought of it.”

“That is why we are poor. We just accept. We must stop behaving like sheep, we must take control like the Parisians. We must insist on better conditions.”

“They tried that in Bordeaux once, I heard. There were riots about the price of bread, but nothing changed. Look at the price now.”

“But if you never complain, nothing will change, that is for sure. The rich are not going to wake up one morning and decide to give away their money, are they? So go and ask your landlord – I challenge you! Don’t be lily-livered like your salt.”

Nicholas looked out towards the estuary, hidden from them by the dykes and saw the thin stream of water beginning to make its way towards them.

“Quick, get that salt off the ground, they have opened the sluices.”  The two men worked quickly to save the last of the salt and pulled the bags up onto the higher ground between the salt pans just as the first of the high tide snaked over the low barrier and covered the silt again. Nicholas ran around to close the little gate that would hold today’s sea water on his patch of marsh.

“It is so hot, we might be able to be back here in two days for the next lot. The summer is good, more chance to salt away a little of our own, huh?”

Jean-Marc laughed. “Not a good reason not to put in for a share of the seigneur’s. Get him when he is feeling richer, too!” He flung an arm round Nicholas and patted his shoulder boisterously.

It was a bright evening a week later and Eloise was sitting at her dressing table, getting ready for dinner. Marie-Claire was fed and sleeping, under the watchful eye of Eloise’s youngest sister, recently hired as a maid to help her with the baby. So Eloise was free to sit and think, and she was enjoying letting her mind roam, still very aware of her good fortune at having married into a wealthy family. The best bit, she thought, of having money, was not having to work. She thought of the village and of what she might be doing now if she had not married Daniel. Helping her mother to make food for all seven of them. Having to stoke the fire, and then struggling with that big pot over it. Brushing the hair away from her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand, trying not to let her greasy fingers touch it. Instead, here she was, with clean hands, dabbling them in her jewellery box. The late sunshine was coming in the window and lighting up a corner of her dressing table. Eloise plunged her hands into the box, scooped out her necklaces, bracelets and rings, and spread them in the triangle of sunlight. The little pile gleamed. Eloise gazed and touched. There was the string of pearls, glowing softly in the reddish light, which had been her betrothal gift, reluctantly passed on by her mother-in-law, who had told Daniel privately that Eloise’s coarse peasant skin would ruin them. Daniel, in the first flush of excited love and made bolder by his surprising choice of bride, had passed this opinion on to Eloise, along with the assurance that her skin was as smooth as mother-of-pearl. He told her that the pearls had been bought by his great-grandfather, a year after he had won the land around Merillac and with it the chance of respectability. Eloise had been pleased to receive them and often wished she could have met him, a stevedore who was lucky enough to be challenged by a passing Duke. “I’ll bet you my land in the Médoc against your sweaty shirt that you cannot get my luggage aboard before the noon bells ring,” had been the wager, and great-grandfather, who liked to test his strength, had bent to the loads and done the job in the four minutes remaining, to the chagrin and amusement of the Duke, who had reached into his pocket and thrust some papers towards the bewildered but triumphant man. “I have not seen it,” the Duke had said, “it is new land, not good for much. A tiny island until recently, when the Dutch engineers drained the marshes. But if you can work as hard as you have shown me today, you will get more good of it than I would.” And he had walked aboard the ship bound for the Indies, leaving great-grandfather a small landowner.

“But do not tell Madame deVrac you know this. She is embarrassed to think she married into such a family,” Daniel had warned her.

“I am proud to be part of such a family. He must have been a remarkable man, to build this château and become so rich.”

“Not rich enough for Maman. And no title. It is a great grief to her to be plain Madame, a new name too, there were no deVracs before great-grandpapa made it up. To keep us humble, he said.”

A remarkable man indeed, thought Eloise, not one to be ashamed of. I wish my brother Luc could win such a wager and buy his wife pearls. And his grand-daughter could have diamonds like these. She picked up her diamond bracelet, which was glittering and seemed to be shouting out you have real money now, you lucky woman. And there were rings, with different stones, all beautiful. But best of all, there was her gold filigree necklace. She picked it up, feeling a reverence towards the man who had made it. She had often watched Etienne as he worked the iron for horseshoes and knew the skill needed. Had she been a boy, she would have asked him to take her on as an apprentice. It was so satisfying, watching the raw lump of metal turn into something with a planned shape and a real use. But this necklace was on a different level. The man who had worked this metal had used fine skills and delicate care, to create these tiny flowers and birds, interlocking and held by the finest wires. Eloise looked at the beautiful piece lying there in the sun, glowing with a rich colour and felt a happiness fill her as she traced her finger around the gold.

“I watched him make one like it,” Daniel had come into the room behind her. “I wondered why you did not hear me knock, but when I saw what you were looking at, I understood. When I watched him work, time stood still. I could have stayed all day, but I was in his way, just a gentleman whose place was to pay, not watch. So I paid and never regretted. I knew I would have a beautiful wife to wear it one day. Will I help you to put it on?” He picked up the necklace, carefully straightening it out so that it would lie flat. Eloise watched his fingers handling the gold wire and flowers so delicately and felt a huge surge of love for him. Then she blushed. Daniel stepped back from her and laughed.

“What wonderful thoughts are going through that pretty head?” he mused. I think I would like to know, maybe they could be to my advantage!”

Eloise shook her head. She looked away from him, confused and wondering what to say. She was sure she loved Daniel just for himself, but here she was admiring him with the gold. To love gold was unworthy, unless it was to give to the poor in the village. She was not sure what she felt, except hugely lucky. Daniel’s hand crept round her neck, fastening the necklace in place and then his fingers moved downwards across her chest. He left one finger between her breasts and pointed to her reflection in the mirror.

“The only thing wrong with this necklace is that it is too short. There should be a flower just here. And here, and here.” Eloise turned towards him and raised her face. She would say nothing, he would never understand how she could be ashamed to be rich, even just for a moment. He had been rich all his life, nearly thirty years. He did not know what it was to be hungry, or exhausted by work. And now she could share in his good fortune and employ Pascale. Things were better all round; and he had such soft hands. She shuddered as she returned his kiss, feeling it getting more insistent and his hands moving downwards towards her hips. Suddenly he slid one arm under her and lifted her up, burying his face between her breasts as he carried her towards the bed.