Superstition (11 page)

Riley suggested the Hermetic period in ancient Egypt. Drew picked Renaissance Florence. Barry picked the American War of Independence. Joanna picked the French empire under Napoleon. Roger said that anywhere in Europe, at any time in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries—the “Age of Reason”—would be fine with him. Pete Daniels said he would have picked Renaissance Italy, but since that had already gone he thought he'd “run classical Greece up the flagpole and see if anyone saluted.” Sam said he thought that was quite enough to be starting off with and he would be happy with whatever the group chose. He invited Maggie to start the round of comments.

“It seems to me,” she began hesitantly, as though apologizing for stating the obvious, “that it would be a help if we invented someone whose language we all spoke. And I have to admit that French, Italian, Ancient Egyptian, and Greek are a bit, well, double Dutch to me.”

“It's a good point,” Roger said at once. “There's no point in complicating things unnecessarily. I suggest, if we all agree, that we choose an English-speaking ghost.”

Everyone agreed, after which the discussion grew freer. Sam invited those who had chosen “foreign” ghosts to make new choices in their native tongue. Drew opted for Victorian England; Roger said the ghost could, of course, be an English-speaking traveler anywhere in the world; Riley suggested the Russian Revolution, where it was a matter of historical fact that there had been several English-speaking observers; using the same excuse, Joanna stuck with the French empire.

Going around the table again, Maggie endorsed France—“the auld alliance,” in any period—as a second choice. Drew said she hadn't read enough history to be able to imagine any particular period in much detail, but it might be interesting to pick a time when something was happening other than war and bloodshed. She liked Roger's idea of the Age of Enlightenment, when cultures were flourishing and new ideas exploding everywhere.

Barry said that the elements of war and cultural evolution had always overlapped throughout history, and the American Revolution was a perfect example. He was sticking with that.

Joanna suggested that, as several revolutions had been proposed so far, perhaps it might be an idea to go in that direction. Riley conceded that the Age of Enlightenment was perhaps a more attractive choice than the Soviet Experiment, by which time reason had grown overconfident of its ability to solve everything, thereby provoking disaster. During the French and American Revolutions, however, things were still more finely balanced.

Roger agreed. It was, he said, a time when people believed in the scientific process but didn't take its products for granted as they did today. After all, the late twentieth century had televisions and refrigerators and rockets to the moon as proof that science worked. Two hundred years ago, its achievements weren't so obvious. They were ideas more than achievements: an approach, not an answer.

Sam said that if it came to a choice between the American and French Revolutions, then Maggie's point about language should probably be the deciding factor.

“English was spoken in Paris,” Drew said. “Jefferson was in Paris then. And Benjamin Franklin. And what about Lafayette?”

Roger admitted to being no military historian, an ignorance which Joanna doubted because she had seen him notice the brief look of unease on Maggie's face as she realized that she knew next to nothing about Lafayette. Roger, she surmised, was merely being gallant—and Wondered vaguely whether there was any truth in Sam's joke about him looking for a fifth wife.

Barry volunteered a brief sketch of Lafayette's life. Born into an immensely rich aristocratic French family in 1757, he had been a courtier of Louis XVI, but in 1777 had gone of his own accord to America to fight against the British in the American Revolution. He was appointed a major general, struck up a lasting friendship with George Washington, and distinguished himself at the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania. In 1779 he returned to France and persuaded the government to send a six thousandߛman expeditionary force to help the colonists. He was central to the Americans‚ decisive victory over the British at Yorktown in 1781. A hero now in both countries, he returned to France and there became leader of the liberal aristocrats, championing religious toleration and campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade. In 1789 he was one of the first leaders of the French Revolution, but found his essentially reformist instincts outstripped by the revolutionary zeal of Robespierre and others. After failing to save the monarchy, he fled to Austria in 1792. He returned to France under Napoleon in 1799, and lived more than another thirty years as a gentleman farmer and member of the Chamber of Deputies. His popularity in America had never dimmed, and when he paid a visit in 1824–25 he was received with wild adulation and given every conceivable honor.

“It's a good story,” Sam said, “but we can't use him because he's a real person.”

“But we could easily invent an American who went back to France with him,” Barry countered. “Some hero-worshiping kid from New England who gets idealistically involved in the Revolution and winds up on the guillotine.”

Murmurs of approval greeted the idea all around the table, the general feeling being summed up by Maggie McBride.

“I think that's a very good idea, I really do. An American in Paris. Very nice.”

15

H
is mother's eyes were red from having cried all night. He wanted to put his arms around her and promise her that everything would be all right, that they would see each other again one day. But that was not how things were done in their family. He could no more tell her that he loved her and would weep for missing her than she could tell him how bitter was the sense of her impending loss. Her only son was going to France with the great General Lafayette, and in some part of herself she knew with certainty that she would never see him again. Yet when he'd asked her why her eyes were red, she'd brushed him aside with an impatient answer. The dust was troubling her. She had a sensitivity to the grass and flowers in the summer, and to the fine white powder that hung like a mist in the air of the grain mill. “Eat up, now,” was all she said. “You have a day's ride before you and you cannot journey on an empty stomach.”

She busied herself with unnecessary tasks, frowning sternly through the noise and clatter that she made with pots and pans and crockery while her son ate his final breakfast in her kitchen. Through the window she could see her husband, Joseph, saddling up the horses with Edward, the young groom. He started toward the house, moving with his habitual solemn gait, and she knew the moment was upon them. She took a deep breath and prepared herself for parting
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They embraced stiffly, mother and son, unused to such contact. He gripped the Bible she had pressed into his hand and promised he would treasure it. She watched from the yard as they rode together down the track and toward the trees. He turned back once and raised his hand. She raised hers, too far away for him to see it tremble. As they disappeared beneath the dense green foliage, she turned quickly and walked back into her kitchen
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Adam Wyatt felt a weight fall gradually from his shoulders as he rode beside his silent father down the Hudson River toward New York. The lack of contact between them that had been at first oppressive ceased to trouble him, and his thoughts turned toward the great adventure that was opening up before him. It was pure chance that had brought him to the notice of the great Frenchman, an unthinking deed that passed for bravery in the crucible of war. A horse had broken loose and would have betrayed the position of Lafayette's troops as they dug in to lay final siege, under General Washington's command, to the British at Yorktown. It mattered little whether Adam's bold action in preventing the animal's escape had made one jot of difference to the outcome of the engagement; General Lafayette himself had witnessed the incident and had the young man brought to him for commendation. He had taken a liking to the young American and had him transferred to his command. Adam's intelligent and questioning nature—about everything from political theory to science and philosophy—had further recommended him to the sophisticated and good-hearted Frenchman. He had even arranged for the boy to have lessons in the French language when he showed interest in it. Now here he was, not two years on and just turned twenty years of age, heading for France as one of the general's personal staff. He would see and learn things he had so far never dreamed of; and of course he would be seen as something of an ambassador for his new and vigorous young country with its commitment to equality and freedom, ideals that were fast gaining currency in Europe
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He shook his father's solemnly proffered hand on the outskirts of New York, then Joseph Wyatt turned to head for home. His only reason for making the journey had been to take back the horse that Adam had ridden, and he had no wish to linger amid the festive crowds still celebrating George Washington's triumphant return to the city. Adam wandered happily for several hours, drinking in the sights and sounds of celebration, then presented himself at the appointed dock for embarkation on the great sailing ship that would set forth at first tide on the five-week voyage to Bordeaux in France
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The sickness of the first few days (it was the first time he had been to sea) soon passed, and he found himself invigorated by the salty cleanness of the wind that gusted them briskly on their way. He didn't see a great deal of the general on the trip—or “Marquis,” as he was instructed to call him henceforth; the war was over and military titles could be set aside. He was given daily lessons in French, and instructed on protocol in readiness for his arrival. The Marquis de Lafayette, for all his commitment to libertarian politics and the dignity of man, remained an aristocrat who moved in the highest court and diplomatic circles, and those who moved with him were expected to behave appropriately. During those five weeks at sea Adam learned how to speak, move, and even think more like a nobleman than the farmer he had always been. The food onboard was simple, but he grew accustomed to having it served to him by deferential crew members, who also filled his glass with wines of an astounding subtlety and richness of taste the like of which he had never known. The Adam Wyatt who finally set foot on French soil in the port of Bordeaux was no longer the same Adam Wyatt who had embarked in New York
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The next months saw the transformation complete. Lafayette was as much the hero of the hour in France as he had been in America. At every, level of society the French people reveled in the defeat of their old adversary, Britain, and were proud beyond words of the role played in it by Lafayette and the troops he had persuaded the government to send. Lafayette was lionized not only in France but in all the liberal courts and salons of Europe; and, wherever he went, Adam Wyatt went with him. At Versailles he was presented to Louis XVI and his beautiful young queen, Marie Antoinette. In Paris he was introduced to Thomas Jefferson, there to negotiate trade agreements with America. He spoke at length with the elderly and still brilliant Benjamin Franklin, present as a roving ambassador. They were heady times for a young man of his origins. Sometimes it seemed to him that those years of puritan simplicity were all a dream from which he had now woken. At other times he feared that his new life was the dream, and that he would awake to a scolding from his mother for some minor infraction, then have to go out on a cold morning to bring in the herd for milking
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But he didn't wake up, and after a couple of years of his new life he stopped fearing that he was going to. He wrote home dutifully, though infrequently, and received short, awkwardly written letters from his mother, usually with a brief postscript added by his father. The news they contained struck him as increasingly banal and uninteresting, evoking a world that seemed remote and unattractive, a far cry from the life of one of the principal secretaries to the Marquis de Lafayette, to which exalted rank young Adam Wyatt had now been appointed. Although his patron had made a return visit to America in 1784, Adam had not accompanied him; he was, he wrote to his parents, too busy with his master's affairs to think of leaving France. Later, of course, it would be possible, though he could not be sure exactly when
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What he did not mention was that he was in love not only with Paris but with Angélique. She was the daughter of a noble family who were friends of the marquis. They shared his reforming zeal and his conviction that the future must belong to all men and not just the privileged few. At the same time, like the marquis, it never occurred to them that the monarchy was any obstacle to such reform. The king was king of all men, a symbol of the country's unity. That there was unity in the country, sufficient at any rate to carry through such democratic reforms as might be necessary, was something taken for granted by everyone in the rarefied atmosphere in which Adam moved. The young queen, Marie Antoinette, might be criticized for her extravagance and occasional folly, but these were minor matters. The king, though indecisive and a poor leader, was nonetheless accorded the respect due to his position and enjoyed the loyal support of even the most liberal of the nobility and the great majority of the country
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Angélique had become a favorite at court and was a regular companion of the queen. Adam himself began increasingly to be received there. The fact of his being an American hero with a quick wit and a now near perfect command of the language made him a fashionable and fascinating figure. When he and Angélique married in the summer of 1787, their wedding was one of the season's more glittering affairs. His wife's dowry was sufficient for the purchase of a fine house in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris and an estate in the Loire Valley. Adam Wyatt was now a man of substance, treated as an equal by those he had originally come to serve. If America had pointed out the direction in which the future lay, Europe, and especially France, he believed, was the place were it would be most swiftly and successfully achieved
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