Page 18 of The Wandering Season

I braced myself for the scene that was about to unfold before me. Though I’d experienced this twice with Aoife, my brain tried to rationalize what was happening, but no plausible explanations fit. Whatever was happening, I was meant to bear witness and do my part to parse it out later. The bedroom was much like it was now, even if the furnishings weren’t as modern and the linens weren’t a bleached white, but rather a hand-stitched quilt in a riot of colors. A young woman with flowing blonde waves sat on the edge of the bed, weeping with a sheet of paper trembling in her hands.

“Are you all right?”

It was daft to ask, but I couldn’t stop the reflex. I knew she couldn’t hear me. She was like Aoife—an echo, a memory of the lives these walls had witnessed over the centuries.

A couple, presumably the young woman’s parents, entered the room. My stomach constricted, hoping they were kinder than Aoife’s father and stepmother.

The woman paused at the sight of her daughter. “Oh, Imogène . . .”

Her voice caught with emotion, which only caused Imogène’s shoulders to shake with more violent sobs.

“Is it Lucien?”

The man spoke in low tones suited for church. Suited for a funeral.

Imogène nodded, her head still buried in her hands. “One of his comrades in arms wrote me. It was Lucien’s dying request that I get word before the list of the fallen . . .”

A wail escaped from the depths of her. Primal, instinctual, like a wounded animal.

The woman crossed to the bed, sat next to Imogène, and wrapped an arm around her. She pressed a kiss against her forehead.

The man began to fume. “These damned wars. The blasted royals using our sons like chess pieces to be used and discarded.”

He emitted a low growl and started to pace the room.

The woman looked up toward her husband. “Guillaume, I don’t think that is helpful at the moment, mon cher.”

“I suppose not, Martine, but it’s all maddening. What did we have a revolution for if not to depose these petty tyrants constantly carving up the land like greedy children with a cake? To put an end to wars that steal our boys from us and leave us poorer than when we entered them? I wish you could explain it to me, because I certainly can’t understand it.”

Martine turned her gaze to him, pleading. “You speak the truth, but I think now is the time for sympathy.”

Guillaume’s face softened by a few degrees. “Imogène, my darling girl. You have your cry. Lucien loved you well enough that he deserves it. I hope you’ll forgive me if my heart gives in to rage for a while yet. I’ll do my best to keep it in check.”

Imogène gazed up at her father, giving me the first clear view of her lovely, tearstained face, her blue eyes brightened by the evidence of her grief. Her voice trembled so I could barely make out her words. “You cared for him too, Papa. Grieve as you must.”

Martine brushed a stray lock of hair from her daughter’s face. “We all did, chérie. And I understand you both. It is a tragedy and an outrage that he was taken from us so many years before his time.”

Guillaume railed again. “Outrage is right. I’ve heard the Prussians will be at the gates of Paris within a week. What sort of leadership is that, I ask you? Another Napoleon dragging us into a war we cannot win.”

Martine clucked her tongue, echoing her husband’s disapproval. “It’s a disgrace.”

Imogène seemed to stiffen for a moment before another torrent of sobs broke from her chest. “I begged him not to go when he was drafted. To pay one of the poor farm boys to take his place. We could have found the money with his mother’s help.”

Guillaume bowed his head, shaking it slowly. “No, our Lucien was too honorable to send someone in his place, ma chère. That is the way of the dukes and marquesses to keep their sons from harm. Cowardly. Hypocritical. That wasn’t who Lucien was raised to be.”

“It may be hard to hear, but your father is right. Lucien never could have lived with himself if he’d bought his way out of the draft.”

Martine moved to tighten her embrace, but Imogène brushed her arm away.

“He couldn’t have lived with himself? Now he won’t live at all. I’d have taken a guilt-riddled fiancé over a dead one in the space of a blink.”

Her words were a low, feral rumble.

Guillaume held up a hand to stop her. “You have every right to be furious. But Lucien wouldn’t have allowed some poor farm boy to die in his place. He would want you to be proud of that.”

“I’m sorry if I can’t be proud that he died for nothing.”

Imogène jumped to her feet and crumpled the letter that had informed her of her beloved’s death into a ball and threw it in the fire, her hands shaking with rage.

“No, but eventually you can be proud that he died well. I hope in time it will give you comfort.”

Martine rose also but refrained from going to her daughter, whose pain was beyond the gift of her mother’s comforts.

“I know you mean well, but I will never find comfort in Lucien’s death, Maman. I will bear the scars of it forever.”

“Oh my darling . . . I know it seems that way now, but you will heal from this. Perhaps imperfectly, but you will have a life again. You will love again, in time.”

“No, Maman.”

Imogène bowed her head, her eyes directed down to her midsection. “No one will have me. I am expecting Lucien’s baby.”

Martine gasped. Mouth agape, Guillaume stared at his daughter. It was he who broke the silence. “What were you thinking, Imogène? You are the brightest girl in the Aquitaine. I didn’t think you capable of such foolishness.”

She walked over to the window to look outside, but the village was covered in the inky cloak of a moonless night. “We couldn’t bear to wait until he returned. These wars are always interminable. We knew it was imprudent, but we wanted a memory to keep us warm on the long nights alone.”

“You gave yourselves a lovely memory at the cost of your reputation. Your future. And it’s not Lucien who will bear the shame.”

Martine’s arms were crossed over her midsection, gripping her waist as if it was the only way to keep from dissolving on the floor.

“We were engaged, Maman. We would have been married by now had it not been for the war. We wanted to have it done before he left, but the priest wouldn’t marry us before the banns could be read. He claimed it would violate church law and he refused to do so.”

“How far gone are you, then? Two months?”

Martine asked.

Imogène lowered her head. “I just realized this morning my basket of rags hadn’t been touched since two weeks before Lucien left.”

Martine buried her face in her hands for a moment, then examined her daughter with eyes that suddenly seemed ten years older. She let out a mournful sigh. “You’ve got time before the quickening, then. Have you felt it move?”

Imogène shook her head. “I would guess that’s another month or two away yet.”

“Perhaps things will sort themselves. It happens often as not.”

“You speak as if you want me to lose what little I have left of Lucien.”

Imogène spat her accusation. Her eyes were no longer wet but flashing blue pools of fury.

“If you were married, there would be no shame in having the child of a fallen soldier. There would be honor in that. But this child, no matter how much you want him, will be branded a bastard, and you a harlot with him.”

“The town will understand better than you think,”

Guillaume said to his wife. “Lucien isn’t the first of our sons to be taken, and he won’t be the last. She isn’t the first sweetheart left behind in the family way.”

“I have no doubt they’ll have sympathy. For a while. But when the rest of the boys come home—God willing—their mothers won’t have them near Imogène. They don’t want to see their sons saddled with soiled goods, and another man’s child to feed and raise up on top of that.”

Imogène looked at her mother with hollow eyes. “You make me sound like a bolt of linen dropped in the mud.”

Martine didn’t flinch. “Fine silk from the Orient that could have fetched a king’s ransom. Fine enough that you’d caught the eye of the only son of our wealthiest merchant. Now spoiled beyond salvation.”

Guillaume set a hand on Martine’s shoulder. “That’s enough, wife.”

“I don’t speak to be cruel. I speak so that we may face the future with open eyes. Imogène will have a rough road ahead, and I don’t see any utility in pretending otherwise. The sooner we accept it, the more time we will have to plan.”

Her tone was earnest but unyielding. It had been her chief duty to protect her daughter from this exact scenario, and she’d failed.

Guillaume ran his fingers through his graying hair. “All may not be lost. We could send Imogène to a convent some distance from here. We can say she went to stay with a relative for a time. The village had too many memories of Lucien, and she needed to escape them until her heart had a chance to mend.”

Martine took up Guillaume’s habit of pacing for a few moments, considering. At length she turned to him. “That might work. Even if people suspect, they may be willing to overlook the indiscretion if we try to be discreet. It’s the appearance of the thing that matters.”

“So that’s what my child is to you? An indiscretion?”

Imogène stared at her mother, incredulous and trembling. Fear, rage, despair fairly crackled in the air.

“My only concern is for the child’s future and your own. The child can be given to a good family who cannot bear children. He will be cared for. And you will have another chance to be a respected wife and mother, not just an object of pity.”

“How can you be sure the sisters will place the child with a loving family? They’d happily rid themselves of any charge to a willing buyer. Do you honestly think they much care what sort of homes these children go to?”

Martine blanched. “A newborn babe will stand a better chance than a child.”

Guillaume interjected, “I can send out inquiries myself to find a family for the little one. The sisters can just work to facilitate the adoption.”

“You can’t send letters out all over the country, husband. People will find out and all of this will be for naught.”

“I can be discreet, woman. Imogène’s concerns are not without merit. I’ll find the right family myself so she can be at ease.”

He shot his wife a warning look that was plain: Agree to this or she will never set foot in the convent.

She sighed. “You may be right. But discreet, mind you.”

He placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I’ll scour my contacts in Lille, Bayeux, Lyon . . . outside of the region.”

“Well, it seems like you have it all planned, don’t you?”

Imogène crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re sending me off to some godforsaken nunnery to give birth alone and selling your only grandchild off to strangers in some far-flung city where I will never be able to see my baby again?”

“That’s how it must be, ma chère. I hope you can see that.”

Imogène crossed the room and took a shawl from the back of the chair at her writing desk and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Martine asked. “It’s the middle of the night. You’ll catch your death.”

“It’s August, Maman. I’ll be fine. I’m going to console Lucien’s mother. She’ll have received an official letter from the army this night. She has just lost her son.”

Martine grabbed her by the arm. “You mustn’t tell her about the baby. Every person who knows is a danger to your future.”

“She is a good woman, Maman. She wouldn’t want to see me ruined. For Lucien’s sake, if nothing else.”

Martine blanched. “Even so, you cannot risk a servant overhearing or a passerby on the street.”

Guillaume again placed a hand on Martine’s shoulder to still her words. “You won’t be doing her a kindness, daughter. Knowing her son left behind a child to face the world as a fatherless bastard will only add to her grief.”

Martine latched onto this. “Precisely. You mustn’t go at all. To see you will be too painful. Lucien wouldn’t have wanted it.”

Guillaume sighed in exasperation. She was overplaying her hand. “No, she must go. Tonight. It is only natural and right for the fiancée of a fallen soldier to go pay respects to his maman and share in her grief. If she doesn’t go, it will reflect poorly on her.”

Martine stiffened. “Very well. If you put it like that, she must go. But not a word about the child. Our plan depends upon complete secrecy. Is that understood?”

Imogène straightened her spine. “I understand you perfectly, Maman.”

She exited the bedroom door, her footsteps sounding on the stairs. The heavy front door creaked as she exited onto the street below into the dark of night.