This is it, I think. Whatever she says next is going to wreck me.
A memory of Henri in a wild cherry tree flashes through my mind. We were sitting in its branches with our feet dangling when he kissed me the first time. He held his breath like he was afraid I’d pull away. Now I’m the one who can’t breathe as I wait for the baroness to tell me he’s dead . . .
“I’d like to discuss your employment,” she says, and I hiccup with relief, because even if she’s going to fire me, the news could’ve been so much worse. “In light of present political realities, the baron has decided to lock the museum until we can find new homes for the items that invite controversy.”
I don’t know what this has to do with me. Do they want to get rid of Ben Franklin’s ring or Washington’s dueling pistols? Maybe Lafayette’s copy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Or perhaps the trouble is the tricolor banner emblazoned with Liberty, Equality, Fraternity now that the Marshal has replaced our national motto with Work, Family, and Fatherland.
I’ve never cared about slogans or the old trinkets in our museum. In fact, I spent my entire adolescence rolling my eyes at them, so I’m shocked by just how much I hate the idea of locking them away. Maybe the baroness hates it too, because she stares out the window at dormant volcanic mountains and trees now dropping their dried, shriveled leaves. And with real anguish she murmurs, “After all we sacrificed in the last war . . . it was supposed to end all wars, yet here we are.”
We’re both silent until she straightens her smart square-shouldered suit jacket and turns to me. “Marthe, I don’t have to tell you the difficulties we operate under here at the castle. The children need food, medicine, and blankets for the winter. Relief ships with supplies from New York can’t get through the British blockade. We’re going to need the French government’s help, and we can’t get it if this institution continues to celebrate Lafayette—whose political ideas are, in the current circumstances, considered dangerous.”
I’m tempted to ask which of Lafayette’s ideas are dangerous, just to see if she has the stomach to name them. But I don’t, because I didn’t have the courage to argue with the Vichy official when he said more or less the same thing. Now the baroness explains, “My daughter has suggested a way you might be able to help . . . and pursue your art at the same time.”
“You want me to paint over the masonic symbols on Lafayette’s walls?”
It’s a dark joke, but she’s serious. “Nothing so dramatic, but your sculpture gave her an idea. Yes, this is the house of Lafayette. Still, here also lived his wife, Adrienne—a good Catholic, a loyal spouse and devoted mother. A woman to whom the new government should raise no objection. If we were to commission you to replace some of Lafayette’s portraits with new ones of Adrienne . . .”
I finally understand the direction of this conversation, and why it pains her. I’m shocked by how much it pains me. Thanks to Anna, for the first time in my life I’m being offered a commission—my first commission—yet it’s for a terrible reason. And I’m being given the opportunity when seemingly every other woman in France is being told her purpose is to get married and breed. I don’t like it, but can I turn down a chance like this?
“To start with,” begins the baroness, “the foundation would like to purchase from you the sculpture of la femme Lafayette that you made last year. I’m sorry I didn’t think to do that sooner. So if you’re willing to sell it . . .”
I nod, because of course I’m willing. It’d be hard to find any art collectors interested in Lafayette these days, much less willing to buy a bust of his wife—even if I filed her eyebrows down. So I’ll take whatever’s on offer. “Merci,” I say, realizing with a little thrill that it’s my first sale. Beyond that, though, I want to tell the baroness I’m not interested in glorifying a dowdy eighteenth-century wife as an example for modern-day Frenchwomen, and I’m not interested in sanitizing this castle for the Marshal’s visit either. But after such a long time of feeling purposeless and without an excuse to create anything, I feel my resolve cracking even before she offers me the key.
“Anna tells me you’ll need a better workspace,” the baroness says, sliding the key onto the desk between us. “This opens the room our Madame President called her own when in residence at the castle. Beatrice used it as a studio at times, and I know she won’t mind if you make it yours.”
A studio of my own. My first real work as an artist. I stare at the tarnished old key like it’s an apple in the serpent’s garden. And knowing that it’s really Anna who rolled it in front of me, I’m not sure if she’s an angel or the devil. Like she already knows I’m not going to refuse, the baroness explains, “We’ll want a series of sketches portraying Adrienne Lafayette. To really understand her life. Particular emphasis on her devotion as a wife, as a mother, as a persecuted Catholic, and so on.”
And so on . . .
The way the baroness says this, I don’t think she’s a true believer. Oh, she believes in God, but not in Marshal Pétain’s so-called National Revolution—which seems like it’s aimed to undo the revolutions that came before. No, I think the baroness is a pragmatist like me. So I take that key, knowing it’s going to open the door to my future, even though I’m not sure what it’s going to unlock . . .
TWO
ADRIENNE
Paris
April 1774
In the ancien régime into which I was born, obedience was the rule. Thus it is strangely gratifying now to remember that when I was very young—before deference and duty to my father became the hallmark of my character—it was my nature to question. Indeed, when I was a little child, my long-suffering maman once jested that my favorite word was why.
But, of course, she was the one who taught me to ask . . .
It was Maman’s habit to invite my sisters and me into her sumptuous gold and crimson chambers, where, seated by the fire in her favorite upholstered armchair—the one with gilded arms and embroidered with fleur-de-lis—she instructed us with soft eloquence and a sense of justice to believe that though we were girls, we had a right to our own consciences. We certainly tried her patience in adhering to that principle in matters large and small. Little Rosalie’s violent tantrums, pretty Pauline’s aloof disdain, Clotilde’s refusal of all things feminine, and my persistent doubt in God.
Why must we go to church services?
Why do we not see, feel, and touch God, if he exists?
Why would a good God allow evil things to happen?
Only our eldest sister, the sweet and gentle Louise, was the perfectly pious and biddable sort.
Yet only once do I remember my mother complaining of us. In a fit of exasperation she threw aside the veils that covered her pockmarked face and cried, “You girls are far less obedient than other children your age!”