Annette

We have another enthralling extract from Jay Taverner's Liberty today. It really is very good.

You can avoid the big publishers and get hold of a copy direct from the authors here

- and all the others in the Brynsquilver series too.

Annette’s chamber was at the top of one of the towers flanking the entrance to the château. From the window, she could see across the courtyard to the chapel and the stables, and beyond them to the wide plain where the river flowed in slow curves between the vineyards. All the land she could see belonged to her father, and all of it was planted with vines. The gnarled black stems stood row on row, like black characters on a whitey-brown page, telling the story of her family’s wealth and her own inheritance.

Below her, the château was already awake and busy. A woman crossed the cobbles slowly with two pails on a yoke; a girl scattered crumbs for a flurry of doves and a screw-necked peacock. Annette watched as a young man emerged from the stable block, his hair straw-gold in the morning sun. It was a moment before she recognised Father Lamontaine, the chaplain. Pierre. She stared. His hair was beautiful. She had hardly ever seen him without his neat little clerical wig. She watched as he set his slender shoulders and started off towards the chapel. He would say his morning Office while waiting for her father. Annette suppressed a sigh at the thought of her stern and so predictable papa. Philippe Lavigne-Brillac was a devout man; he would not breakfast before he had heard mass. But neither would he hear mass until he had taken his morning ride.

There was the noise of wooden shoes on the stairs. Annette turned from the window and climbed quickly back into bed, drawing the heavy brocaded hangings close. It was Jacqueline’s job to wake her mistress, and she took it as a personal failing if Annette was up before she arrived. Annette dived across the wide mattress and snuggled back into the warm hollow in the feather bed. Soon the door creaked open and she heard the click of pattens on bare oak boards. There was the rattle of the tray being put down, then the ring of the fire-irons and the wheeze of the bellows as Jacqueline blew life into the embers of last night’s fire. The routine never varied. Sometimes Annette longed for her to drop the fire tongs or knock over the chocolate pot, just for the sake of variety.

At last the bed hangings were twitched aside and the maid’s pale face appeared, almost on a level with Annette’s own, since the bed was high and Jacqueline rather short.

‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle! You are awake?’

‘Bonjour, Jacqueline. All’s well?’

‘Very well, Mademoiselle, thank you. It is a fine day. The sun is shining. You are ready for your chocolate?’

‘Thank you, I am.’ Annette propped herself up on her pillows and took the tall porcelain cup with its delicate pattern of flowers. While she sipped, Jacqueline fastened back the bed curtains and laid out her mistress’s silk robe de chambre at the foot of the bed. Then, dropping a low curtsey which caused her almost to disappear from sight, she picked up the slop pail and departed to fetch hot water.

With a sigh, Annette contemplated her day. She would dearly have liked to ride out herself this morning; the brisk weather with its hint of spring to come called to her to be out of doors. But there would be visitors for dinner: relations, therefore boring as well as demanding. That would mean at least two hours’ dressing; with her lessons and her daily devotions, and writing to her godmother in England, there would be no time left for riding. She hoped one of the boys would exercise Aurore; the little grey was frisky enough already, and had not been ridden yesterday either. Annette sighed again. It promised to be a tedious day, apart from the hour she would spend this morning in her thrice-weekly lesson with the chaplain. The thought made her smile. Thank heaven for Father Lamontaine. Far more than tutor or confessor, he was her friend and ally, the only other person in the house anywhere near her own age, and the only one with whom she could have any conversation about things that mattered. She felt under her pillow for the book they were discussing: the Social Contract of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She could not imagine exactly what her father would say or do if he knew his daughter was reading such revolutionary writing, but she certainly did not want to find out. She pushed the book back under the pillow as Jacqueline clattered in to help her rise and dress.

*********

A small fire was burning in the petit salon, Annette’s favourite sitting room, three floors down from her own bedroom in the southwest tower. The curious old decoration – a bright blue ground with a rambling frieze of vines – was so antique that it came into her father’s category of ancient things not to be disturbed, so it had been regularly repainted. In front of the fire the table stood ready laid with fragile cups and saucers, tea pot, coffee pot and urn, and a set of Venetian glass decanters. The waiting footman proffered the keys of the tea-caddy and coffee box and then retired.

Annette spooned grounds into the little pot. The Abbess watched her every move with cups, spoons, and urn, until she cocked her wrist and poured out the coffee.

‘Charming,’ her great-aunt said then. ‘And you sing and play? Paint a little?’

Annette nodded, concentrating on the coffee.

‘And languages?’

‘I have learned a little Latin with Father Lamontaine, and I correspond in English with my godmother Lady Waldon, in London. But you know my father disapproves of too much learning in a woman.’

‘Moderation in all things,’ the Abbess agreed smoothly as she sat forward to take the cup. ‘St Paul teaches us well in that. Oh, no, my dear, I must not take cream. Far too rich for those of us who know the simplicity of the cloister.’ Leaning forward, she unstopped one of the decanters and poured a generous dose of brandy into her coffee. Then, with a rustle of dark brown silk, she sat back and looked at Annette. ‘It is time to talk about your future, my dear.’

‘Madame?’

‘You are – how old now? Nineteen? Then in only two years’ time you will come into your fortune. You may be aware that it is, happily for you, considerable. The money you inherit from your mother and grandmother, and which your father has used wisely on your behalf, will be yours to use as you wish. When you marry, this personal fortune will go with you. Out of the family.’ She put down her cup and looked at Annette, as if to check that she was following. ‘You are, of course, the only child – and a girl. So you will understand, my dear, that it would be best for everyone if your fortune could be kept in the family.’

There was a pause. The bones of Annette’s stays poked into her breasts excruciatingly. She sat up straighter. Meeting her aunt’s gaze, and keeping her voice as steady as she could, she asked, ‘How, Madam, could that be achieved?’

‘Good girl. There are two ways. The first, and simplest, would be for you to marry within the family. Your father and the Count are, I believe, discussing that at the moment. However, your cousin François is only six, and not robust, so that I think will be decisive.’

Annette stared in disbelief. The old woman might have been discussing a choice of gloves.

‘The alternative,’ she continued, ‘and to my mind the obvious choice, is for you to take the veil. You are a sensible girl, and would soon adapt to the religious life. And as my cousin, you would have golden prospects at Our Lady of the Little Angels. Your dowry would come to us, therefore, but only during your lifetime. The promise of its safe return in the future would provide a surety against which your father could raise other moneys, should the need arise.’ She sat back in her chair. ‘Excellent coffee. I’ll take a little of the cherry brandy now, if you will kindly pass it.’

********

It didn’t take long to find out what had happened. Annette didn’t even have to ask; everyone in the château was talking about it. Father Lamontaine had been caught, in Jacqueline’s words, ‘doing it’ with the new stable-boy. Monseigneur had sent unexpectedly for a horse, to ride out yet again to check his coverts and speak to the gamekeeper in the Big Wood; Edouard, rushing into the lower stable on this errand, had caught the two of them in the straw.

Jacqueline went into no further detail about what they were actually doing at the moment of Edouard’s arrival, and Annette did not feel able to ask – but she did wonder why it had caused quite such an enormous fuss. She remembered quite clearly the last occasion on which anything remotely similar had happened: Edouard’s predecessor, a poor relation of her father’s who had acted as his private secretary and steward, had got one of the maids with child. Annette had been about ten at the time, all the more agog to know about it because no one wanted to tell her; but she was sure that Cousin Georges had not been unceremoniously bundled out of the house. The girl had been turned away, of course – but Georges had stayed; he had only died last year. Annette could not see why anything these two young men might have been doing was worse than fathering a bastard on a servant. But Jacqueline just sucked her teeth and shook her head when Annette tried to re-open the conversation.

The house was in complete disorder; Annette dined alone in her room, and was trying in vain to order her thoughts by recording the events of the morning in her journal when Jacqueline reappeared, looking agitated.

‘Your noble father, Mademoiselle. He requests the pleasure of your company at once. He is in the grande salle, Mademoiselle. Please go quickly!’





Monseigneur Lavigne-Brillac was standing at the end of the always-chilly room, his back to the huge carved fireplace. He did not acknowledge her, or ask her to sit. As soon as she rose from her curtsey, he said ‘Father Lamontaine has left this house this afternoon, Mademoiselle. You will oblige me by not attempting to contact him, or communicate with him in any way.’

She had often seen her father angry, but this cold fury was something new. He was white; his hand shook as he spoke. ‘Is that understood, Mademoiselle?’

‘Yes, yes, of course, father,’ she stammered. ‘But –’

‘You will not ask, and we will speak no more of it. It is not a thing for a young girl to think of. And you will, of course, not encourage the servants in any gossip on the subject.’

As if they needed encouragement! Annette held her tongue.

Her father spoke again, his voice strained. ‘However, I must ask you a question – a painful one. It has been brought to my attention that Père Lamontaine was in possession of more than one immoral and irreligious book.’

Annette froze. She pictured the tiny blue book even now hidden under her pillow, and the two companion volumes resting under a pile of handkerchiefs in her dressing table drawer. She swallowed.

‘He was your tutor. Can you assure me that he never, at any time, put this wicked filth in your way? Never offered you anything to read that was not of the purest piety?’

Annette met his eye. ‘No – I mean yes, father,’ she lied. ‘I cannot think what you could mean.’

His face cleared a little, but he did not take his eyes from hers. She willed herself not to blush but then, realising that maidenly confusion would be an appropriate enough reaction, she looked down, and up again at him with big round eyes.

He strode two paces across the wide hearth while she held her breath, then turned back to her abruptly.

It had not worked.



‘Nonetheless,’ he said, ‘one cannot be sure what paths corruption takes to an innocent mind. You must be put beyond further harm at once. Tell your woman to pack your immediate necessaries tonight. You must go in the morning to the convent at Bordeaux.’