Page 6 of The Widows of Champagne

Josephine

J osephine lost track of the day. Her sense of time and place had disappeared. The harvest was underway, but she couldn’t remember when the picking had begun. Possibly last week. Maybe only yesterday. She should have marked the date in her journal. Now, the memory was only a smudge of its former self, a mere blur in her mind, like so many before it.

She looked down at her hands, as if the answer lay in the shriveled skin and crooked joints. When had she acquired that series of scratches across her knuckles? This morning? Yesterday, perhaps?

It was hard to think when she was so tired.

Every muscle in her body ached as she reentered the chateau. She could hear her own breathing, labored, filled with exertion. Today, it had been harder to hide the ravages of time. All morning, she’d struggled to keep the limp out of her steps and the creak out of her bones. Gabrielle had noticed anyway. And had sent Josephine back to the house to “rest.”

Her pride had wanted to argue, but the look of pity and fear on her granddaughter’s face had been too much to bear. An insult that left her feeling ashamed and exposed. Josephine had been unable to spend another minute stripped of her dignity by her own flesh and blood. For the first time in her life, she had left the work unfinished. Tomorrow would be a better day.

“That scowl will scare the mold right off the grapes.”

“Oh.” Josephine gave a little start. “Marta...you...” She swiveled to face the housekeeper, the move costing her precious energy. “You startled me.”

“Forgive me, mon amie .” The other woman flashed an apologetic grimace as she exited the pantry, her arms full of flour and eggs, sugar and butter. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“Of course not.”

Marta dumped her load onto the chopping block, her eyebrows pulled together. “You should not be back so early. What happened to chase you indoors?”

“Nothing has happened.” Josephine snapped out the words as unwanted emotions rose to the surface before she could tamp them down. Fury, humiliation. She hated how well Marta could read her, as if Josephine were a book the other woman had read many times over.

“You are especially tired today. More than usual.”

For a moment, Josephine could only stare at the other woman, mortified by her uncanny ability to voice what she would never openly admit. “I’m cold.” When she saw the skepticism on Marta’s face, she added, somewhat defensively, “The thermoses are empty. I came for coffee.”

“You will have to pour it yourself.” Marta hitched her chin toward the empty mugs sitting near the sink. “Then you will tell me why your granddaughter sent you home. And why you are acting as surly as a scolded child.”

“Gabrielle did not—” She closed her mouth, thought over her response, attempted another try. “I am not—”

“Lie to yourself, Josephine,” Marta said, relentless as only she could be. “Do not lie to me.”

“You—you know nothing.”

“I know enough.” Marta’s expression softened. “Now, get your coffee and sit down before your legs give way.”

Josephine poured the hot liquid. She did not sit. Her pride was too great. She leaned against the counter and watched Marta sprinkle flour into a bowl. Butter came next. Milk, eggs. Then, the kneading. The finished pastry would become something greater than the individual ingredients. The process was not unlike the LeBlancs’ technique for making the finest champagnes in the world. The methode champenoise was a careful, artful blending of juices from several harvests, three at least, but as many as five.

Marta’s hands paused. “I know what you are thinking.”

“You have begun reading minds in your spare time?”

Shaking her head, Marta’s hands resumed molding the dough. “You are thinking of war.”

“ Non. I am thinking of champagne.”

Marta gave Josephine one of her penetrating stares. “You carry too much worry in your head and too much burden in your heart. It’s unhealthy.”

“I fear what is to come.” She set down the untouched coffee. “Our family may not survive this one.”

“Now you are thinking of war.” Marta sighed. “And it’s my fault.”

“War is always in my mind.” LeBlanc history was a tale of blood and death. Their home was at the center of Europe, with no mountain barrier, nothing to protect the land, putting this region—the LeBlanc lands—in the path of invading armies. The Goths, the Visigoths, and others had marched through Champagne. Yet of all those wars, the last one had been the worst, a festival of slaughter.

Why could she remember so much about the long-ago past and so little of the first day of harvest? “This new war will be harder than the last,” she said in a whisper.

Marta laid her hand on the table, no longer working the dough, but paused in a moment of rest. Like Josephine, the gnarled fingers, now covered in flour, carried the signs of age and daily toil. “Many young lives will be lost.”

Face tight with emotion, Marta joined Josephine at the sink. In shared silence, they studied the vineyard beyond the terrace with its centuries-old balustrade.

“They are my old friends.” Josephine didn’t need to expand her meaning. Marta knew she spoke of the vines. “And yet, these days, they have become strangers.”

“You are looking at them with the eyes of the past.”

Marta was only half-right. “I am looking at them with the eyes of an old woman.”

Her vision wasn’t what it once was, and perhaps that explained why everything looked wrong in the vineyard today. Or perhaps it was simpler than that. Perhaps it was the dark, ominous clouds rolling in from the north and casting a pall over the vines. They seemed to strain against the wires that held their trunks steady, fighting their confinement like souls trapped between this world and the next.

“We will survive this harvest,” Marta said.

“Yes, we will.” The vines had an uncanny ability to wither one season and thrive the next. War, however, left its horrors on the land and its people for generations.

Signs of past battles were everywhere. If Josephine craned her neck to the left, her eyes would fall on the Monument to the Heroes of the Black Army of Reims. The five bronze figures represented a group of French and African soldiers united in their defense of the city in 1918.

There had been great heroism in the midst of brutality. She closed her eyes, lifted up a prayer for...what? She didn’t know what to pray for anymore. A fine harvest? A quick end to a war that had yet to begin? So many uncertainties.

One thing was clear, Josephine must find a new brand of courage. Now, today, before she lost her will, she must safeguard her family’s future as she’d done during a previous war.

She could not do it alone.

She turned to her companion, purpose filling her. “Marta, I require your assistance.”

Later that night, the two women left the house in the veil of darkness, the moon their only light. The buzz of a German plane sounded overhead. Josephine’s hand reached out to grip Marta’s. Frozen in place, they looked to the sky. Marta crossed herself as the plane flew dangerously low, skimming across the sky almost lazily. It was alone. Although not the first to take this circuitous route from Germany to Paris and back across the border again.

The random flybys were meant to intimidate. The tactic often worked. The people of Reims would fall into a stupor, lulled by Germany’s silence. But then a lone plane would appear in the sky, and everyone would snap to attention. For a time. Eventually, they fell back into their flimsy sense of complacency. Until the next roaring dot appeared in the heavens.

Josephine continued watching the plane. Marta stood quiet and unmoving by her side. Only once it was swallowed up by the dark western sky did the housekeeper break her silence. “It’s gone.”

“Let’s continue.” Josephine led the way.

She and Marta each carried a heavy cloth bag laden with jewelry, statuettes and other small valuables plucked from Josephine’s private collections. In total, the pieces were worth a small fortune. There were larger items that would have to be hidden. But not yet. Not until the fighting began. Any sooner and she would draw attention to what she was doing. With suspicion came questions she wasn’t prepared to answer.

“I don’t understand why we must do this.” Marta kept her voice low, as if someone might be listening.

Josephine frowned into the night. She would have preferred not to include the other woman in her scheme. But she could no longer trust herself to keep things straight in her mind. “We have been over this, Marta. You are to be my memory if mine fails.”

A heavy sigh met her explanation. “I meant, why must we do this at night?”

“No one can know where we are hiding these treasures.”

“You do not trust your own family?”

“It’s not a matter of trust.” With secrets came lies. With lies came the weight of guilt, the burden often too heavy to carry alone. Josephine had done it once before. To protect a single member of her family. She would harbor this new secret to protect all the others.

Marta’s voice sliced through the still night air. “The Nazis may not come.”

“They will come. And they will rob us.” Josephine had a sick, queasy feeling at the thought. “Or they will stand by while others steal what belongs to my family.”

As they’d done in Germany nearly a year ago. The authorities had looked on as mobs ransacked and looted homes and businesses. Though called Kristallnacht , the Night of the Broken Glass, the violence had lasted for days. Lives had been lost. Irreplaceable treasures had fallen into the hands of thieves and charlatans. If the Nazis allowed such horrors on their own streets, how much worse would it be for France?

Josephine surfaced at Marta’s voice. The woman had been talking while she’d been thinking of injustice. “You are missing one rather significant point about that terrible night.”

“And that is?”

“The violence was targeted solely on Jewish homes and businesses.” Marta’s eyes glimmered like sparkling black diamonds under the bright moonlight. “No one in your family is Jewish.”

Marta was wrong. One of them was, in fact, by Germany’s definition, a Jew. But that was a secret Josephine would never reveal. Not to Marta.

Not to anyone.