Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution

By James Tipton

A privileged young woman finds romance with the English poet William Wordsworth and adventure amid the French Revolution in this debut historical novel.

Born into a world of wealth and pleasure, Annette Vallon enjoys the privileges of aristocracy, but a burning curiosity and headstrong independence set her apart from other women of her class. Spoiled by the novels of Rousseau, she refuses to be married unless it is for passion. Her stubborn devotion to her romantic principles bears the sweetest fruit when William Wordsworth, a young English poet, enters her life. She will be his mistress, his muse, his obsession. But theirs is a love that will test Annette in unexpected ways, bringing great joy and gravest peril in a dark time of chaos, upheaval, and death.

Set amid the terror and excitement of the French Revolution, Annette Vallon is an enthralling and evocative tale that captures the courageous spirit of a remarkable woman who, for too long, has been relegated to the shadows of history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061873843

Book preview

Annette Vallon

A Novel of the French Revolution

James Tipton

For Lorraine

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, The Prelude, BOOK X

Adieu, mon ami…. Aime toujours ta petite fille et ton Annette qui t’embrasse mil fois sur la bouche, sur les yeux…. Adieu, je t’aime pour la vie.

ANNETTE VALLON, FROM A LETTER TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Contents

Epigraph

Preface

Book I

The Loire Valley, France, 1785–1791

Remember That

Nymphs and Satyrs

Novels

The Chase

Champagne and Omelettes

Shadow World

A Safe Place

Presence

Luxury

Book II

1791–1792

The Foreigner

Cut-Head Jourdan

The Four Tasks

Why the Flight to Varennes Failed

Chimera

The Serpent

Plato’s Cave

All That Binds the Soul

Different

Dark Ravine

Sweet Will

Nature’s Child

Tightly Twined

The Window

Overbless’d

Birthday

Is it Still yesterday?

The Sourd

They’ve Fallen Early This Year

Revenge Will Prosper

Stream of Fire

The Holy Tear

Book III

October–December 1792

Irrevocable Steps

Mercy

A Narrow Ledge

A Slant of Light

A Triple Disgrace

Love Remains

Book IV

1793–1802

Words

La Boucherie

The Secret Room

Intriguers

The Mother of Orléans

The Titus Cut

An Omen

To Regenerate Mankind

The Key

The Crypt

The Sainte Lucette

The Marquis De La Roques

The Letter

Delicious Revenge

The Blonde Chouanne

Tonight, My Friend

The Noyades

Peace

Perpetual War

Book V

1802–1820

Mutability

The Hissing Foam

Let Us Dance

A Beauteous Evening

What Remains Behind

Legends

Wait

To Thank Her

The Healing Well

L’envoi

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

PREFACE

January 4, 1821, Paris

It’s raining. Through the veiled January day I can still see the river, as if unmoving, in the distance. But it is moving. My God, we saw the world change. I want to get it down before I am old. The window, slightly ajar, brings in the rain-fresh air that mixes with the smell of aged leather on the three diaries in front of me. But it is not all in the diaries, and I had to stop writing them, for fear they would fall into the wrong hands. My memories remain fresh and cool. I remember the feel of a silk sleeve on my skin, the lightness of taffeta when I danced, and the big riding cloak when I could feel the reassuring weight of a pistol in each pocket. I remember the river flowing through it all, glazed with sunsets or cracking with ice. We were all young then. So many minds thought France was bringing about a new world of freedom and equality and brotherhood. I loved a young poet, who had come from England full of those thoughts and of a love of words with which to build his own vision. Some tried to change the world. I just tried to live in it, which became increasingly difficult.

I loved a young poet then.

BOOK I

The Loire Valley, France, 1785–1791

REMEMBER THAT

But may you never have a revolution in this country," the tall American said.

We were dining at the grand house of my older sister and her husband. The American gentleman had come down from Paris in a golden carriage on some business regarding my brother-in-law’s vineyard. I had not paid attention to what it was: I was only sixteen and fresh out of convent school.

In France you enjoy the most graceful lifestyle in the world, he continued. You value philosophy, literature, art, music, all the sciences, more than any culture I know, including my own, and he laughed. "But your people do not have any representation in the government. To that end, I hope they may be educated, but gradually—for if they were thrust headlong into a freedom which they have never known, it would be chaos. A revolution here would not be as it was in my country, against a foreign power; a revolution here would be…a disaster. But forgive me for presuming to speak on a subject of which you know far more than I. What do you think, Mademoiselle?" And his blue eyes suddenly looked directly at me.

I frantically tried to think of something, one line from Rousseau that I had talked about with the girls because I had applied it to the despotic Sister Angèle.

"I think that since Might cannot produce Right, the only legitimate authority in human societies is agreement."

The American laughed. That must be an enlightened convent school your parents sent you to, he said.

I’m afraid, Monsieur, that some of us read Rousseau in secret.

Well, for now, he said, Rousseau may be best kept behind closed doors in France and pondered upon by fine young minds. And he turned to the men.

We were on to the duck with orange now. Our guest took a bite of the meat but held back on the sauce. I was impatient for the steaming sauceboat, placed in front of him, with its mélange of caramelized sugar, lemon and orange juices, white wine, and red currant jelly.

A servant poured a ruby wine into the one glass I was allowed at dinner. I was sure it was my brother-in-law’s vintage, which he said smelled of green peppers and pea pods. He was championing a red wine in the land of famous whites. I reached for my glass, then caught Papa’s eye and became aware of a curious tension at the table. Our guest, my father had told me, was the finest wine connoisseur in the New World and had a peculiarity about trying new wines. He thought they were only truly appreciated in the context of food, so he waited until dinner to make his final decisions. He had come all the way from Paris now for this moment. All his pleasant and insightful conversation, all of my sister’s dinner plans and Cook’s lengthy preparations, were leading to this.

The American drank some water, raised his wineglass, inspected the color within—I noticed a flame from the hearth reflected, shimmering, in the burgundy depths—swirled it gently, tipped, sniffed it—would he smell peppers and pea pods? He closed his eyes, sipped, held, and almost chewed the wine. He seemed oblivious to us, in a world of pure concentration.

I could smell the sauce, see its curling steam, and very much wanted him to pass it to me. But there was no rushing the moment. A smile gradually spread across his handsome face. He opened his blue eyes. Monsieur Vincent, he said, it exceeds all expectations. It must be those cool limestone caves you keep it in.

The table relaxed. Maybe he would now pour the sauce. But he held the eye of my brother-in-law. This was a moment of business transacted between gentlemen, at a table laden with duck and wine. I will take ten cases and, with your permission, the soil samples I collected today back to Paris, the foreigner said.

I liked his hair. My father and brother-in-law had powdered wigs, and here was this bright red hair that seemed to shine in the candlelight.

Our guest lifted the porcelain boat and discreetly lavished his duck with the sauce that was now coming my way. He paused a moment and took in the fragrance. Then he returned to business. And I will accept your offer to ship some vines to Virginia.

I would be honored, my brother-in-law said.

I will call it, said the American, the Shenandoah grape.

I liked the name. Pardon, Monsieur?

Yes, Mademoiselle?

Could you please say that name again?

Shenandoah, he said. It is the river that runs near my home. Like your great river here. It is very beautiful, and I miss it. When I think of America, I do not think of the vast Atlantic seaboard and of our victory against the British Empire; I think of one small patch of rocky land on top of a cliff overlooking the river. So you remember that, Mademoiselle, and he looked at me again, his eyes twinkling.

Remember what, Monsieur?

To thine own land be true, and he smiled, and my brother-in-law asked him to sample another wine, and their conversation went on, but it isn’t part of my story.

NYMPHS AND SATYRS

I liked watching the slanting evening light that gleamed on the wild strawberries in the woods on either side of the road.

We had endured a long carriage ride, and it felt good now to be walking toward the château de Chenonceaux, its iron gates and front arches and tower just visible at the end of a long aisle of plane trees. I liked this château. As a girl one summer we had stayed here a week, and my older sister, Marguerite, and I once ran through the long hall that crosses the river, our steps echoing on the black-and-white-checkered floor, river light catching in the panes of the dormer windows, its shadows dancing over the walls, and I stopped and leaned out an open window over the dazzling water and felt that I was not in a stone château at all, but in a gabare, a large vessel on the Loire, its sails full. I also got delightfully lost in the maze one evening. As I turned the corners between the hedges, it was like going from one green glade into another. Marguerite finally had to come and fetch me.

Now I was going to my first end-of-the-season fête at this grand château. Maman had pointed out what a privilege it was for a girl just out of convent school, and Marguerite, who wasn’t coming this year, said you never knew what to expect at the last fête. Papa, who had work to do in town, said these fêtes were silly things and it would be far more enlightening for me to become more familiar with his library at home.

But I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. This was life, coming to greet me. And like Julie in my favorite novel, I would open my arms to it. The day had started simply, with finding the right satin ribbon that matched the decoration in my wide-brimmed hat. Then we had the long journey, following the river west. And tonight I would observe the elegant dancers, the folded fans swaying from the ladies’ wrists as they took the hand of the gentlemen who bowed, and they both moved in unison to a music of mathematical precision. The heavenly spheres themselves, hanging in space, were governed by the same harmony that regulated the dancers, I believed. I myself hoped to learn all the intricate steps this summer. Now it was enough just to watch.

Maman held the arm of our old family friend, Count Thibaut of the château de Beauregard.

Come now, ladies, we’re late, he said.

Why wouldn’t dear Madame Dupin allow us this year to drive our carriages to the door? This is not in good taste or style, Maman said.

I was teetering on my heels, trying not to look gauche.

Man was born to suffer, the count said.

Oh, you can say that, said Maman, "with your buckled shoes and walking cane. I think it’s most inconsiderate of Madame. As if we’re peasants. Who’s ever heard of walking to a ball?"

"It is just the entryway, my dear. We will all deserve our refreshments. And you know what an old eccentric Madame Dupin is."

Just then I thought I saw something coming toward us in the woods to my right. I looked on the other side of the drive and saw it there too: a flicker of a shape, darting swiftly between the trees, then hiding behind them. We were almost to the entrance of the château.

In a sudden flurry of movement, figures leaped from behind the trees and surrounded us. The light was dim now, and I could only make out that they didn’t look quite human. They had horns on their heads, were bare-chested, and, as they pranced around us, appeared to have hooves. The count drew his sword. The creatures were wailing in a demented way and leering at us, especially at me. One tugged at the long sash on my dress. I slapped its hairy hand. Another leaped by and wisped his fingers through my hair.

Get away. Get away, Maman cried, waving the back of her hand at them. The count set himself in the en garde position, his cane balanced in one hand and the sword in the other, ready to lunge against the beasts from another world. Then he laughed and sheathed his sword. They’re in costume! The fools we are. This is Madame Dupin’s way to usher us to the party.

As if in assent, one of the satyrlike creatures motioned us to follow him toward the château. Maman and the count started, and I held back. Annette, don’t be afraid, Maman said. "These are Madame Dupin’s satyrs; they won’t hurt you."

Then one pranced by my side, nodded his head, bent down, and lifted my silk dress and underskirts well above my knees, and ran off. But Maman had turned her back and didn’t notice.

She always does something strange for the last fête, she said to the count.

The satyrs leaped ahead of us now in the dusk. At the moat they melted into a crowd of waiting guests, bobbing among them, pinching and dancing. Torches hung in sconces set in the château wall. Everyone was staring down into the moat. I heard lovely pastoral music. I am small and couldn’t see over women’s ostrich plumes, palmlike feathers, or hats with lace brims.

Not walking on my feet but balancing on the heels, I must have said Pardon me a hundred times, weaving my way through a sea of satin-covered hip pads or long trains falling on the ground.

Then I saw it too: a small barge with an orchestra on it, coming gently toward us on the current of the river Cher, diverted here into the moat. Silver candlesticks sat on veneer wood tables beside the musicians. As if we were one person, the crowd sighed in appreciation. A gentleman shouted, Bravo! and we all applauded. Then we gasped. From a door in the wall just above the level of the moat, six young women dove, one after another, into the water and swam around the raft. Their gossamer-thin muslin gowns, once wet, made them appear naked. Their slender arms, dipping in and out of the water, shone in the torchlight; then they floated directly below us, their faces upturned, and every one of them was beautiful.

They began to sing—something I vaguely recognized from an opera Papa had taken me to long ago—

The denizens of our sacred groves

Have prepared for you a glorious festival!

And already their sweet pipes

Announce the happy moment

When you shall reign over them.

At the end of the last phrase, six satyrs jumped into the water and proceeded to caress or kiss the lovely maidens. The nymphs and the satyrs! a gentleman cried. Bravo, Madame Dupin. You have outdone yourself.

We all applauded again, and the crowd swept across the drawbridge to the terrace as the barge and the nymphs floated around the bend in the moat. I was glad for the swimmers that it was such a warm night.

And four years later, when the Revolution began, I was often glad that, because the villagers loved old Madame Dupin, the château de Chenonceaux was not sacked or burned.

NOVELS

Be careful, reader: my troubles started because I read novels. Rousseau was my favorite author—not necessarily The Social Contract, but his fiction, especially the one about Julie and her true love. So that was my problem.

Novels had ruined me by the age of sixteen, when Maman invited me into her salon and told me in a hushed and solemn manner, as if she were imparting to me my catechism, that she was arranging for me a mariage de raison with a wealthy sugar merchant from Tours. Instead of thanking her and being blushingly excited, as was proper, I merely said that I was honored by her consideration, but I would wait. I was waiting for true love, you see, for my novels had told me that it existed, somewhere. They had also given me a suspicion that maman’s arrangement had more to do with money and position and less to do with love—in fact, she hadn’t even used that word when she outlined for me my future happiness. My novels had also told me that true love rarely had an auspicious ending, but that seemed of little importance to me at the time.

So my wise mother said, Very well, then, I will prepare you for society, to meet your perfect mate. I thanked her profusely. I knew I was a gauche girl, so I welcomed this opportunity, especially when she told me the next day that she had hired me a tutor. Now tutors figured prominently in two of the novels I had read. It seems gauche girls couldn’t refuse them, and well-intentioned mothers kept hiring them. I half hoped mine would turn out to be an old music master, whose hands trembled when he turned the pages of the music, whose voice was dry and crackly when he sang. Yet I also knew my teacher would be nothing of the sort and that, as in my favorite novels, my destiny was laid out before me.

My tutor was an accomplished music and dance master from Orléans, who, Maman pointed out, only came to the finest houses. His name was Raoul Leforges, and when I met him he was dressed fashionably in black silk, from the ribbon on the queue of his powdered wig to his high-collared coat to his knee breeches and black-and-white-striped stockings. He held a black beaver-skin hat in his left hand and bowed graciously to me. No one had ever bowed to me before, and I thought I had never seen a more handsome or a more striking man.

Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse had prepared me for such a thing, and so had other novels that we circulated in secret at the convent school, especially the one reserved only for girls in their last year: Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses. Even then, to read it you had to be approved by a committee of head girls and swear oaths that could send you straight to hell, and you could only have the book for twenty-four hours at a time.

The first lesson started with Monsieur Leforges presenting his hand, without saying a word. He nodded, and I stepped back, thinking we were going to dance, and stopped.

No, no, he said, look at your feet.

I did, and was embarrassed for them.

Monsieur Leforges had Maman’s permission to break the gaucherie out of me all summer, and he did it through chastisement, rigorous hours, and occasional encouragement. More than once, as I performed a particularly shameful step, he tapped me firmly on the behind with his bamboo cane, and I glowed beneath and above my muslin.

He was preparing me for my first ball, which would be at the château de Beauregard, the home of the count. As well as my entrance into society, it was the first fête of the new season, and the count wanted to make sure no one wanted for anything and that his fête would set the standard for all the rest to come. That warm September night, as the orchestra played some gentle Lully and before I had to hasten up the marble stairs so I could descend them in slow, graceful steps, I lingered by the refreshment tables. I was too nervous to sample anything, but I swore to myself I would have my fill after I danced my first dance, which I was sure would be in a kind of daze. Then I would retire here for most of the night.

On a table that stretched the length of the room lay rows of corniottes, little three-cornered hats made out of cheese pastries; religieuses, also known as nun cakes; almond pastries in the shape of yellow, green, and red fish; puff pastry with almond filling (which I loved when I escaped from convent school and sat in a pâtisserie in Orléans last winter); plum, lemon, and strawberry tarts; pear cake with red currant jelly; and pears cooked in wine, lemon, and sugar. I leaned over the bowls to breathe in the fragrant syrup. And then, in a hundred glasses set in bright silver cups, gleamed strawberry ices. At the end rose a pyramid of candies: dark chocolate, sweet lemon, almond macaroon. And at every pillar, under every arch, stood a sober servant holding a silver tray of tall glasses of sparkling white wine.

I had worked harder than I ever had in my life all that summer to become a lady; to play piano passably; to know how to curtsy with subtle nuances of difference to a marquis, to a count, to a father; to talk to servants in a firm yet gentle tone; to walk with grace and dignity; to converse by asking questions and by making witty interjections; to sing somewhat respectable duets; and especially, to master the art of the dance. And Monsieur Leforges, the nonpareil of style and taste, had been my taskmaster in all of these. I deserved all the rewards I could reap now of pastries, tarts, ices, and wine. But I had grown to worship my stern and handsome tutor, who said I dare not lose my concentration through even one taste or sip until I had proven myself on the ballroom floor—and through those curtsies that I would bestow on the crowd first, which we had worked on all of a particularly sultry August afternoon. He said he deserved his reward too, although I was sure Maman was paying him well.

Then before I knew it the count had me by the arm, had guided me past the perfumed pear bowls and to the top of the stairs. I was afraid for a moment and thought I might dash into the corridor behind me, which led, in flickering light, to a long hall where loomed tiles of marching musketeers and portraits of every king of France and his queen up to Louis XIII. It wasn’t an attractive thought to run in the half-dark in that direction, and the count still held my arm, as if he intuited my fear.

The music stopped. The count whispered, May the Virgin be with you, though I never thought of him as a devout man, and we began the slow descent, then paused halfway, so everyone could regard me. Now it was disconcerting and wonderful at once, hovering as if in midair in a gauze gown and white taffeta skirt with tiny red roses. All the silk-clad crowd looked up at me, a hundred candles lighting their faces, powdered wigs, and coiffured hair, their smiling, expectant faces, the proud faces of my parents. Everyone I loved was there, with a soft glow over them all.

My nervousness melted, and I felt ready to enter their world, to be one of those who moved with grace and dignity and beauty under crystal chandeliers and marble stairways. The gauche girl had suddenly dropped away, and now I, too, would lightly touch gloved hand to gloved hand, a fan dangling from my own wrist, my satin-slippered feet gliding over the bright floor to the beauty and order of Rameau’s music, which dictated the orderly and beautiful movements of the dance. The music started again, and I descended.

It’s a marvelous thing to be young and at the radiant center of one’s world. The problem, of course, is that so often that radiance is purely of one’s own imagination, and its light of such short duration.

One thinks differently when one is young, if one thinks at all. It seemed to me that Monsieur Leforges was the world of charm and grace. I gave my heart to that world. My tutor religiously followed Rameau’s Art of the Dance, and I religiously followed him in everything, and by the end of that evening I had followed him too far.

I never made it to the tables waiting for me with their sweet rewards. After I had been the center of all the world and had danced with ease in a circle of taffeta and perfumed lace cuffs, Monsieur Leforges claimed his own reward. The night of my triumph I was vanquished by my tutor in the small room built for a secretary of state in the Renaissance, at the end of the portrait gallery of kings and musketeers. The tiny red roses on my taffeta skirt were crushed. I stared at the gold bells in the coat of arms of the lords of Beauregard that hung from the gilt ceiling. Monsieur Leforges abruptly got up, saying he had to return to the ballroom. He had to dance late into the night, he said, with the guests. As a professional dancer, that was his duty. He did not ask me to go. I didn’t know whether to follow him or wait for him to ask me, and all of a sudden I was alone. At first it seemed intolerable, and I couldn’t move from my position on the Turkish carpet. Then it seemed a relief to be alone in the dim room, with the glow of one wall sconce reaching up to the Beauregard coat of arms. I stayed a long time with the golden bells. They seemed, in the sagacity of their silence, their ancient age, and their loftiness in the shadows, mildly comforting.

A fortnight later I made my way down the steep streets and the old stone stairways in the falling dusk. I pulled my collar high and my broad hat down as the first, fine September rain made slick the cobblestones and softened the dusty streets. Maman had put a date to my marriage now with the sugar merchant, and I would lay the matter before Raoul.

He always had an answer.

I had left my chaperone, the stern Agnès, at the market and went early for a lesson at my tutor’s. Feeling the urgency of the situation, I walked past his protesting valet, opened the tall doors of the salon, and saw my dance master on the settee on the far side of the piano, engaged with a wealthy widow of the town. Yards of velvet skirt lay crumpled about her hips, revealing fine legs (far longer than mine). A few days earlier I had been so naïve as to believe that settee was reserved solely for me.

Oh, it’s your little convent-school girl, Raoul, the widow said languidly, not shifting her position. "She must have been quite a challenge."

Monsieur Leforges’s game with me was up, and he ended it with a cold panache all his own. Madame Lambert, my tutor said evenly, not taking his arms from around her, is having her lesson. You may return at your proper time.

I will never forget how then, without lifting her head from a silk pillow, Madame Lambert let loose a lazy peal of humiliating, vulgar laughter.

Monsieur Leforges chuckled too.

THE CHASE

My father taught me to ride to the hunt that autumn.

He had found out about my liaison with the dance tutor through a letter I had lost at the count’s château. The count had informed him. I never knew what Papa went through then, but the count’s discretion and Papa’s forgiveness kept a foolish girl from social disgrace. My father didn’t let Maman know, but made her abandon her plans for the mariage de raison with the sugar merchant. He told her I wasn’t ready, and Maman declared to me that because I wanted to choose my own husband like a butcher or a baker’s daughter, I was decidedly common. She had reserved for me her worst insult, and the matter was closed. She had made a success with her first daughter’s marriage and had one more daughter besides me with which she could make another success. Maman had washed her hands of me, and she handed me over to my father. He told her he was going to drive the silliness out of me by teaching me to hunt. That was fine with me. I had had enough of dancing instruction.

The hounds were kept in a kennel at the side of the hunting lodge and fed a huge slab of very red deer carcass every evening at five o’clock. The count’s young groom, Benoît, stood between the meat and the lean, even emaciated hounds and kept them at bay with a whip. He finally let them at the meat, and they tore at it and fought and jumped on each other to get at it. It was not a big enough piece of meat for all the hounds. I always felt sorry for the ones that could not make it in for their dinner.

That autumn the Revolution was still years away. The gold leaves fell from the chestnut trees, and my father taught me to shoot. In the morning we gathered outside the count’s hunting lodge. It was well off the main road, buried in the woods on the grounds of his château. You could smell the forest of pines and chestnuts as soon as you walked out the door.

The hounds, tails wagging, barking in anticipation, milled about the legs of the horses. We sat on horseback in a circle now, an odd assortment: my father, tall and gaunt in an old cloak; the count, of perfect physique with gold braid on his coat; the baron de Tardiff, short, portly, and dark; my brother-in-law, Paul, tall, slender, and fair; Philippe, the count’s son, a year younger than I, skinny, swimming in his coat; and I in my riding cloak, three-cornered hat, and jockey boots, all in the English style, as my maidservant, the wise Claudette, prescribed.

I was on the horse that my father had given me, a three-year-old sorrel mare I named La Belle Rouge, shortened to La Rouge, after my father’s stallion, Le Bleu. (He wasn’t really blue but a dappled gray.) The men’s grooms sat on horseback just behind them, each with a pistol and a musket just in case one had a problem with a wounded stag or wild boar or a horse with a broken leg.

The count’s horse took the lead down the narrow track to the meadow, our customary starting point. The horses grew more excited as we approached it, La Rouge’s ears forward and Le Bleu, in front of me, wanting to break out, stepping to the side of the path. Then we heard the hounds.

When they reached the meadow, the men let the horses have their head. From the cold shadow of the forest I saw the count’s stallion streak out in the early sunlight, followed quickly by the others, their servants bouncing faithfully behind them. Now, my father and I together at the dividing line between shade and light, we let Le Bleu and La Rouge go. I had raced my mare against stallions along roads that summer and had felt her speed, but she was young and uncertain and followed Papa’s lead. Yet she was running flat out now, and my boot heels skimmed the meadow, and I could smell the grass, fresh with the morning, as we flew through it. It was as smooth as walking, twirling my bonnet in my hand, but a thousand times more exhilarating.

The leaders were nearly across the meadow when a stag bounded out of the grass in front of them; it hung in the air for an instant and disappeared into the thicket on the other side of the meadow. They took off after it. Papa and Jean, his groom, plunged into the thicket after the others, and La Rouge continued her pace, unslackened, so I pulled hard at her reins to turn her left, to slow her down just at the thicket’s edge. I was still not far behind Papa when I heard him curse as a low branch swiped his cheek. But following Papa’s groan was another squealing sound in the brush.

The commotion of the hounds and horses had flushed a boar, who now charged through the thicket with Papa after him. La Rouge heard the sound too, and its shifting unfamiliarity, as if the brush itself were squealing, frightened her. She bolted back toward the meadow, and I reined her in there and had just calmed her down when I heard a shot from the direction in which Papa and Jean had gone. La Rouge whinnied but got no response from the other horses. We rushed through the thicket in their wake; both Rouge and I could sense where the others were. She dashed headlong down a gulley; I was obliged to stand upright in the stirrup, her rump above me, it was so steep. Ahead of us lay a dry streambed, strewn with leaves under a sheer rock face. Le Bleu, riderless, stood under the lee of the rock.

On the ground, amid copper leaves and stones, lay Papa. Le Bleu must have bolted and thrown his master when the boar, cornered in a rocky gulley, turned on its pursuers. Jean had shot his musket, wounding the boar and increasing its desperation, and was now reloading. The hounds leaped and barked at the boar; it grunted, lunged at them, hating them, its tusks thrusting in the air and the hounds leaping back. Then the boar went after the source of what had caused him pain and, before Jean could fire again, charged through the dogs and gored him in the ankle. Jean dropped the musket on the rocks.

Jean’s scream, the boar’s fierce grunts, the hound’s howling, and the horse’s whinnies filled the gulley; then the boar paused, the dogs keeping back, and it turned toward my father, a welcome quarry down on its level among the stones. In the seconds that the boar paused to consider its second prey, I pulled as hard as I could at Rouge’s bit, and we reached the bottom of the gorge. As the boar charged my father, I jumped down from my saddle, snatched up the musket, and shot into the nape of its tough neck. The boar lay still among the leaf-littered stones, a few inches from my father’s chest. The hounds were on it in an instant.

That night at the count’s table we enjoyed boar’s head along with haunch of venison in chestnuts, though I myself did not partake of the boar. Above us hung a tapestry of the hunt: a man in a red-and-blue cloak on a white steed leaping over a log, in the grasses a white hart not far before him, about to disappear into a forest of a hundred shades of green. I always preferred to think he got away, across the meadow strewn with the mille-fleurs, the thousand flowers, into the woods out of which rabbits peek: the hunter still has his crossbow slung across his back. The joy is obviously in the chase. The enormous hearth flames licked massive logs; light and shadows flickered across the oak paneling.

My father had attended Jean’s wound and said Jean might always walk with a slight limp. Papa himself had a twisted ankle from his fall, and he had his foot up on an embroidered cushion and was in jovial spirits.

He insisted that I sit at table with the men. The count’s son had retired early; Paul had gone home to spend the evening with my older sister Marguerite and their little daughter, Marie, and the men of the château de Beauregard were toasting me now.

To Annette, a huntress the likes of whom haven’t been seen since the days of Diane de Poitiers, the baron said, which made Papa beam. Diane was his heroine from the days when the kings and queens hunted through these forests.

To the huntress! they cried.

Everyone laughed and drained their glasses, and with my father glancing proudly over at me, I felt I belonged just as much here, with the huge fireplace and the wine and laughter, as in the ballroom under a thousand tapers of shining chandeliers and the carefully timed movements of hand and leg and foot, the fan swinging or lifted for coy messages.

What else might I do now? I was glad now Raoul Leforges had his rich widow and dozens of other naïve or not-so-naïve girls, and that I was free. What a purgatory to live only through another—him or a sugar merchant in Tours. How odd life was, with its twists and turns.

I was not sure it was proper in a woman to do, but I raised my glass, and in a voice that sounded strangely high, I proposed a toast of my own.

To my father, I said, who taught me to ride, to hunt, and who would have stared that old boar down if I had not made that unnecessary shot.

To Jean-Paul Vallon! they sang out, and the firelight flickered on the hunter’s white stallion and on the oak beams high above.

That was the autumn of my sixteenth year, when there was nothing more frightening than difficult dance steps, untrue lovers, ambitious mothers, and wounded wild boars.

CHAMPAGNE AND OMELETTES

Other nations can live on rice or pasta or potatoes. The French need their bread. For two seasons the harvests had been bitter failures, and in the summer shortage the grain prices rose so no ordinary citizen could afford to pay them. You can read what you like about the political and social causes for what happened that July of 1789, and those books will all be right, in their way. But the Revolution started over bread.

We had heard that a city magistrate in Orléans, who himself had no children, remarked that if all the little girls died, there would be plenty of bread. This comment especially disturbed my younger sister, Angelique, who at fifteen wondered if she still fell into the category of little girl. (I, at twenty, felt exempt.) That complacency only lasted a night, though. The next day the rumor was corrected: the magistrate had actually said, "All children should be thrown into the river because bread is too expensive."

Throughout that summer the grand châteaux of the Loire were looted and burned. The grandest château, Chambord, with four hundred chimneys and a double spiral staircase on which I had once played hide-and-seek, was one of the first to go. Every velvet armchair and rich tapestry was dragged down that staircase and piled below it and set alight. The fire spread rapidly, and soon even the coffered ceiling and the sun rays painted on the shutters of the room where the Sun King himself had stayed were scorched beyond recognition. Such was the fate of all the châteaux where kings had stayed. And the Loire Valley had been the playground of the kings.

We lived in the town of Blois, just north and west from Chambord, along the river Loire. There were riots in town whenever a grain barge arrived at the quai, and by the end of the summer the château de Blois, too, had been sacked. No one went out at night. No one knew how it had got out of hand so quickly, nor when it would ever end.

But I had never seen any of the effects of the Revolution myself. I had only heard about them. The Revolution as conversation topic was considered impolite, so we never talked about our fears and lived almost happily in this way through that summer.

My father, a respected doctor in town, still visited patients, riots or no. His friend the count also remained unfazed that the world we had always known was changing before our eyes. The count himself had inherited the château de Beauregard, but since it was one of the lesser châteaux of the Loire and since he always provided his peasants and tenants with bread, he was not worried. My own parents thought it actually safer to be out of the town, and my younger brother Etienne and I were staying now, at the end of the summer, with the count.

I had known him as a type of uncle most of my life. When my father taught me to ride to the hunt, the count was there. When I had the liaison with the dance tutor, it was the count who kept my father from challenging the musical Casanova to a duel, who used his influence so that the tutor’s reputation was ruined and not my own, and made him quietly and permanently leave town. It was at the count’s château that the finest dinners and dances had always been held. So when the streets in town weren’t safe, and beautiful châteaux went up in flames, I was happy to visit the count.

In the fall Etienne was to start at the university in Paris, at the Sorbonne. Revolution or no, it was continuing; in its many centuries it had known worse than the fall of the Bastille. So my brother and I had this time together. He was a good friend to me, and I did not look forward to him going away. That September he and I rode through the count’s fields and woods and raced through the meadow where the hunts had always started. The count was not continuing them this year. There was never a year in anyone’s memory that the château de Beauregard did not hold its autumn hunt and ball. But the extent to which the Revolution had turned the world upside down was not fully made clear to me until one day when Etienne and I were returning from a ride in the meadow. Those days we always went armed.

We saw peasants walking on the road toward the château as if they were going to a fair. A young man had a drum; many carried rakes or scythes like muskets on their shoulders. Young women picked poppies and put them in their straw hats. They all seemed happy and as if on holiday, and indeed, they were not harvesting the count’s fields that day. We’re going for dinner at the château, they shouted to us. The count is waiting. But we had heard of no general invitation for dinner to all peasants on his lands.

As we crossed the narrow stone bridge over the Beuvron River, they surrounded our horses and held on to their reins as we walked. A women caressed my riding skirt and undid its lower buttons up to the saddle (I already had the bottom two undone, myself, for freedom when I rode) and fingered my petticoats and tore lace fragments off.

Our strange procession wound its way up the long tree-lined entryway to the château, a road most of them had probably never been on. Long live the Third Estate, they began chanting. Now the Third Estate literally meant all Frenchmen except the clergy and the nobles (the First and Second Estates), and this, of course, included Etienne and me, though the peasants seemed surprised when we shrugged and joined in the chanting. "I’ll always say long life to myself," Etienne said to me.

My escort now grabbed the bridle tight as La Rouge snorted at another woman who tore off a large handful of petticoat, exposing part of my left leg, and I dared not lower my crop at them, for they surrounded us so our horses could hardly move, and although they all seemed jolly, and some now, tired of the chant, started singing, it was prudent, I thought, especially in these days, not to aggravate a crowd.

We stopped by the ruins of the chapel in front of the château. The count had told me this chapel was three hundred years older than the original château: matins were sung here long before our dances graced his gilded ballroom. Today a few peasants, warm from the walk, lounged in the shade of the chancel and leaned against the toppled stones that would have once vaulted over their heads. Now the green woods beckoned through the fallen ceiling.

Most of the peasants stood, still chanting or singing their own songs. They stared at the impassive face of the château. Suddenly the count emerged from his broad doors and stood in front of them, his arms crossed, surveying the crowd. The chanting and singing ceased abruptly. The count wore his velvet dressing gown and soft indoor shoes, and his eyes fell on Etienne and me, on our horses toward the back, the bridles of both of our frightened horses held by more than one pair of hands. Then he smiled and spread his arms wide, Welcome, citizens, he cried out, and they all cheered, and he himself pulled the ancient iron knocker and opened the doors of the château de Beauregard to people I’m sure he had never dreamed would enter it. Leave your tools in the courtyard, please, he said.

Etienne and I rode to the stables and quickly unsaddled and brushed our horses. We wanted to see how the count was faring with the crowd, and I took the big iron lock from behind the stable door and closed and locked the doors. If I so much as saw anyone approaching where La Rouge was kept, I’d be there with my pistol.

We hastened to the château and found the count as if leading the crowd on a tour of his home. This, he said, is our kitchen. It was, in fact, almost as big as the chapel; it certainly held within it a religion, I think, which the count practiced more regularly. Observe, he said, how we can have two capons or haunch of venison turning at once in two different fireplaces.

I’m not sure if at first he thought they just wanted to look at the château, or if he thought that if he could charm them, then they would leave, but they seemed still in awe of the château, or of him. You see there, bread freshly baked for supper—have your fill; I wish we had more. And in a second two loaves were grabbed, then fought over and torn for general consumption. The count saw men heading down some stairs. Etienne and I looked at each other. The count pushed his way to the front of the crowd and held up his hand. My special gift, for this day in which we honor the Third Estate (he must have heard the chant coming up his drive), "is that those of you who are old enough—not you, ma petite, he said to a girl my sister Angelique’s age, scampering past him, are welcome to sample my superb cellar, with the best of wines from throughout the Loire Valley—" No one but Etienne and I heard the last words, as men rushed by us over the flagstone floor. But others, mainly women, now ran in a predatory frenzy into the other rooms as well. His stand before the cellar door had been the count’s last semblance of authority over the crowd, his act of giving to them so they would not be stealing from him.

Etienne and I blanched as we saw men emerge from the cellar with bottles in their hands, breaking their tops off before us in the kitchen and grabbing crystal glasses, in their hurry breaking others, or, in a fit of bravado, a man drinking gingerly from the jagged top of a broken bottle, then giving it, as a challenge, to his neighbor. You should go, Etienne said to me. I’ll stay here and see that the count’s all right.

Then I’ll stay too, I said, and we went into the front salon and saw a man drinking straight from a bottle of Chinon red with his feet up on one of the new embroidered chairs. But most of the count’s guests seemed in a hurry to grab something before someone else did—porcelain teacups disappearing into giant apron pockets; on top of the lace tablecloth of the dining room table, women in dirty bare feet reaching up to pull candles out of the chandelier; other women ripping large sections off the tablecloth or jerking at the velvet draperies, pulling them down, and one taking a knife from her pocket to cut sizable portions to carry home.

I saw the count calmly talking to an outraged Edouard—the only time I ever saw the count’s valet other than imperturbable—and patting Edouard on the back and sending him out of the house. Now Etienne and I sat on stools by one of the fireplaces in the kitchen. I had hardly ever been in the kitchen before, and I noticed writing inside the chimney, on the stones above the spit that turned the game. I got up, peered into the sooty emptiness, and read: Those who keep their promises have no enemies.

The count had opened one of his own bottles of champagne and was coming toward us with three glasses. But he never reached us, for one of his guests grabbed the bottle, another the glasses, and a third one, a big man, swaying back and forth, stopped him. O great Count, he said in a voice that carried throughout the kitchen. I would like…an omelette!

Why not? the count said. His cook and all his servants had left when they saw the mob coming, so he looked over at my brother and me. Now it’s your turn to help the Third Estate, he shouted to us. Fetch eggs and cheese and butter from the pantry before they’re all gone, please. He reached up to a tall shelf and threw us two baskets each. The pantry had not been ravaged yet—grabbing things seemed more important first—and we returned with perhaps more than the count wanted, but we stood beside him, and Etienne stoked the fire and I mixed the ingredients and the count prepared omelette after omelette. Some took it in their hands, others pulled porcelain plates off shelves. The Vallons always come through in a pinch. Didn’t know you knew how to mix so well, Annette.

Didn’t know you could cook so well. Count, I said, what promises have you broken? I’m referring to— I motioned with my head towards where I had been sitting.

The old fireplace motto! That’s been here at least two hundred years. As a child I’d visit Cook and she showed me that once and made me promise I wouldn’t break promises. But all these people— he waved a hand and held a pan with the other. "They are not my enemies. If they were, they would have left my body pierced with a pitchfork before my own door—and believe me, that has happened to others of late—no, they are just a bit on fire with the opportunity, suddenly available this summer, to get something more for themselves or for their families. If any promises have been broken, I’m afraid they are right about the Third Estate—it’s been by those in love with power in the First

Reviews for Annette Vallon

[misskatz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fantastically written narrative that reads very much in the traditional prose of romance.The intrigue centers much in the storytelling without needlessly dragging plot. The characterizations remain genuine and grow on you throughout the progression of the story.It certainly helps that it reads in much the same manner as actual books published in the years it took place. A book I would recommend to fans of historical fiction.

[acqwoods · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I got this book from the bargain section and had no idea what to expect. The jacket said it was a novel about William Wordsworth's first love, a French woman who he fell in love with on the eve of the French Revolution. Not knowing a lot about that time or about Wordsworth meant that I learned a lot and I'm definitely interested in finding out what was fact and fiction. The beginning of the book, which was more of a love novel, was nothing special, but about 1/3 of the way in the Revolution hit full swing, the action picked up, Annette began to figure out what she was about, and I was hooked. For all my readers who like to read about strong, independent women (and I know there are a lot of you), this will be an enthralling read.

[elsyd_19 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A novel about Annette Vallon, who loved and entered into a pseudo marriage with William Wordsworth. They had one child, a daughter.This is equally about the French Revolution. I liked the first two thirds of the book, but found the last third really hard to get through!

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this novel set during the French Revolution, James Tipton fictionalizes the love affair between a young English poet William Wordsworth and Annette Vallon. Drawing from history, Tipton depicts the struggles and trials of these two lovers and the circumstances that kept them apart. I enjoyed the character of Annette, although I did feel she could have been stronger. I also felt that Annette, who bares an illegitimate child and actively opposes the tyranny of the French government by aiding those fleeing the country grew into a much more interesting character than William, who seems almost dull by comparison. Overall, an enjoyable read. Recommended for those who like reading about the French Revolution.

[amandacb_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I did not enjoy this book as much as I had hoped, especially since I am a big fan of both historical fiction and Wordsworth. While I understand the title of the book is Annette Vallon, and not William Wordsworth, it was just personally disappointing to see him as a background figure. Otherwise, I did enjoy the story of this woman's courage and convictions in a tumultuous time.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Behind every great poet is a courageous, passionate woman; Annette Vallon should be known as far more than just William Wordsworth's first romance, and all praise to James Tipton for shining the light on her for a change. If Annette's character is initially too fantastic to believe, it is only because she lived through incredible times and held the courage of her convictions. Raised in the comfortable ignorance of a wealthy bourgeois background, her story is not a bland championing of the French Revolution, but an honest and occasionally terrifying account of a regime built on paranoia and violence. The author has weighed his obviously thorough historical research and faithfully applied it from the perspective of his heroine. When her uncle's chateau is raided by a local mob, Annette is understandably terrified, and when she is forced to take a stand, it is on the side of humanity, of her own community, and not the Revolution. This refreshing evaluation of a chapter in French history too easily read as a victory of the people is admirable. Tipton describes the Reign of Terror and events like the 'Noyades' in Nantes as Annette might have viewed them - with fear for her life and for her daughter's future, grief for the fate of her country, and a determination to challenge the ruthless leaders and their neurotic laws. Annette becomes a champion of the Chouans, the resistance movement of the Vendee, and risks her life to save others facing persecution and death. In disguise, like a French version of the Scarlet Pimpernel, she becomes a highwayman, freedom fighter and spy, but not as a royalist or an exiled aristocrat - merely to help people, and not to fail her own conscience. But what is truly inspiring, and lifts this novel above the usual historical melodrama, is that Annette's story is based on fact - from 1792 to 1815, she offered protection and shelter for refugees fleeing the Revolution, the Directory and Napoleon, and was rewarded with a pension during the restoration for her services to her country. James Tipton has expertly woven Annette's history with an engrossing romance to create this detailed portrait of a lost era and a forgotten heroine. William Wordsworth, in a mere supporting role, is weak and unremarkable compared to the mother of his child. The detailed descriptions and evocative narrative also help to bond the reader with Annette throughout her bohemian and dramatic life in France, sharing her love and loyalty for the beautiful countryside in which she lived. Apart from some less than subtle exposition, this is a captivating novel. Recommended.

[skrishna_663463 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Review for HarperCollins:Annette Vallon is a gripping tale of historical fiction that places the reader at the center of events during the French Revolution. At the beginning of the book, Annette is barely more than a child; however, through the course of the book, she morphs into a strong woman and a leader in her own right. Though the book is billed as the story of William Wordsworth’s mistress, Annette is much more than that. Indeed, after the beginning of the book, Wordsworth only plays a minor role. The real story of the book is Annette’s struggle to follow her conscience and make a difference in the horrible backdrop of the French Revolution. She is a heroine in her own right, and fans of historical fiction will thoroughly enjoy reading her story, as presented by James Tipton.