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La Belle Christiane

Copyrigth 2011 by Lyn Cote

All rights reserved

Chapter Six Scne 2

And what about Jean Claude? Did he remember her at all? In another month Jakob’s enlistment would end and she would see her son again. Would she last till then? The day of freezing rain had ended. A wind had swept the clouds from the sky. The stars glittered in brittle light without warmth above her. Tildy was coughing again. Christiane trembled as she banked the fire and then went inside the flapping canvas walls to lie down and warm her friend.

#

A few days passed and Christiane and Tildy sat miserably in their windbreak, wrapped in blankets, huddled by the fire. The two of them held mugs of steaming water. Without intending to, Christiane let out a downhearted sigh.

Tildy tried to smile. “Come now, Christiane. I’m sure the provisions will be better today.”

Christiane’s lips trembled with the cold and unshed tears. The men still had not been allowed to stay with their families. “Why can’t Jakob and Michael be with us?”

“They must be battle-ready. Have courage. I’m sure we will finally go into winter quarters soon.”

This tender regard from her suffering friend broke Christiane’s resolve not to cry. “Oh, Tildy, how can you say that? You know the Hessians are just the other side of the Delaware. They are just waiting for the river to freeze then they’ll march over and…,” she faltered. She could not put her worst fears into words. Jakob taken prisoner. Jakob killed. The Rebellion crushed.

“Christiane, God will not desert us. We fight for the rights of every freeman.”

Christiane’s face twisted into a bitter smile. She wanted so much to believe Tildy’s word. “What do the rights of free men mean in this misery? You know the Hessians are living comfortably, quartered in private homes, warm and well fed. Across the river the farmers and merchants are happily enjoying the profits of selling their goods to them for English notes and silver. They won’t even accept the worthless paper money our husbands are paid with.” Out of her pocket, Christiane pulled a few bills of the Continental Army script and tossed them into the fire.

Tildy’s hand gripped Christiane’s wrist to stop her. “Christiane, our circumstances are terrible. We can’t fool ourselves. But what we are fighting for is worth all this. It is.” She shook Christiane’ hand to emphasize her point.

Since Christiane had never confided to Tildy her doubts about this Revolution, she pressed her lips together to keep herself from letting her boiling resentment gush out. “How can you say that? We’re doomed–”

“No! Let me explain!”

Christiane could see that Tildy’s eyes burned, not with passion alone, but with fever. Quickly Christiane switched moods. Murmuring soft concern, Christiane began to chafe Tildy’s hand and then refilled Tildy’s mug with hot water from the kettle, steaming in the midst of the fire. How could she have let herself upset Tildy–when the woman was nearly dead?

“Let me explain, Christiane.” Tildy said, her eyes nearly closed. “When Michael and I still lived in Boston in our own home, we quartered a British soldier for a time–”

“You did?” Christiane arranged the blankets around Tildy’s thin shoulders and reached for another short log for the fire.

Tildy’s smile twisted wryly. “Yes, it is the king’s right, don’t you know? Michael could have been jailed or our property confiscated for refusing. They marched them through the streets and stopped at each house. The English officer walked right in, looked over the house as though he owned it, and assigned one soldier to us.” Tildy’s tone was hard as she recalled this slight. “As we got to know Dan, I really understood for the first time what all Michael’s political meetings had been about.”

“How?”

“It was difficult, having been born and raised near Boston, to understand how he thought about things. We had gentry in Boston and they had influence, of course, but their lives very rarely touched ours. Besides, a rich man only had one vote at town council, just like a poor man. But when Dan told us how he was conscripted, it made me see the power of the king.”

The tent flapped wildly in a gust of wind. Christiane tried to shield Tildy from it with her own body. Tildy began to cough and Christiane helped her sip the warm water. Finally the coughing fit ended. Again Christiane urged her not to speak, but she went on, “They send conscripting gangs through London and drag away the young men. What I could not believe was his not resenting his treatment!” To stave off another fit, Tildy swallowed a deep draught from her cup.

“We tried to explain that it was against his rights as a freeman to be treated that way and he said what we called freedom was rebellion. It frightened me.” Tildy’s voice was fading, but her eyes were burning.

“Don’t try to talk anymore. Lay back. You need to rest.”

Tildy shook her head stubbornly. “In twenty years would such gangs rove through the streets here? Would the king drag my sons away to fight a foreign war?” Her head shaking uncontrollably, Tildy looked Christiane straight in the eye. “Or maybe your son.”

Nodding, Christiane urged Tildy to lie back. When Tildy closed her eyes, Christiane pressed her hand to her friend’s forehead. She thought back to Jakob’s reason for leaving his home. Her childhood in France had been so removed from these things, so sheltered.

And then a scene from the past snapped into her mind with sudden clarity. It had taken place only shortly before her mother’s death. Christiane and her mother had been sitting in the library. Her grandmother had stood over her. For over an hour, the older women had rehearsed Christiane over and over on the ranks of nobility–who outranked whom from the bottom fringe of society upward to the king. Christiane had listened carefully and repeated the information to her grandmother’s exacting standard. But evidently her own lack of enthusiasm had finally stung the older woman. “Don’t you understand, child, the importance of this?”

Christiane had sent an appealing look to her mother. “Christiane, grandmere is right. This is of the utmost importance.”

“But why?” Christiane has asked.

“Why!” the elder had fumed. “Don’t you understand, we are talking of rank and rank is power? You must know which men are too powerful to disappoint–to refuse! Don’t you realize that one serious affront, one insult, could destroy everything three generations have built? Are you simple-minded?”

At the time as the woman’s voice had risen insistently, Christiane had trembled with a vague fear. She had not understood completely then, but she grasped it now. Just now she had believed herself to have been sheltered in the past by her family, but now she realized that–in the end–her life as a Pelletier would have taken her to the very seat of power–the French Court. And she would have spent her days carefully treading a tight-rope of pleasing those in power in order not only to prosper, but to survive. She shivered and it wasn’t from the cold.

“You’re right, Tildy,” Christiane said soothingly. “It’s time you rested now.” She took the empty mug from Tildy’s hand and tucked the nearest blanket up over her friend’s chin. After nodding, almost immediately Tildy fell into exhausted sleep.

#

Christmas dawned. Christiane was barely aware that it was her birthday. She and the women around her all sensed that some movement of the army had taken place. Their eyes would not meet each other’s. Most sat sullenly by their fires. They waited in gnawing ignorance. They heard cannon fire across the river in Trenton and they all tensed.

Then late that day Jakob himself burst upon them with the news. “Christiane! Christiane!” he shouted. “We win! We win!” He pulled her into his arms and danced her around the fire. “They don’t even see us coming, Liebschein. It is wunderbar! The general is a genius! He make them look the fools they are!”

“What, Jakob? What are you talking about?” Christiane asked breathlessly, catching his excitement.

“We take back Trenton from those lousy Hessians!” he yelled. “We rub their noses in it. Their own colonel is killed. We show them we are not licked yet!” And then he began dancing her around again and kissing her.

The camp around them seemed to explode with the excitement. Guns were discharged. Laughter, the first in many days, rang out as did raucous choruses of “Yankee Doodle”. Husbands, fathers, brothers filtered in to join the celebration.

Christiane had never experienced anything like it before in her life. It was mass hilarity. The invisible, but normally impregnable line between the decent women and the strumpets disappeared for the evening as everyone joined together in the first real victory in months. The general had done the impossible! He had shown those uppity foreigners what Americans were made of!

The captured rum and food warmed and filled them. The laughter and song fed their weary souls. Finally the party quieted. Now a full eighteen years old, Christiane snuggled contentedly in Jakob’s arms as he slept the sleep of the truly tired. Oh, she loved this man! Somehow they would win this Revolution!