Legacy

Chapter 14

Brigitte

The plane took off for Paris from Kennedy Airport on a Friday night just before midnight, as Brigitte looked out the window, thinking about what she was going to do. She wanted to go to Brittany, but she planned to go to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris first. It seemed fairly simple, once she figured out her way around their archives; all she had to do was look up the Marquis de Margerac and see what they had on him. She already knew he had been married to Wachiwi, but she wanted to see what else there was about them. And then she would go down to Brittany by train.

She’d been brushing up on her French for the past week. It had been fairly decent in college, and she’d written some good papers, but she hadn’t spoken it in sixteen years. She’d been listening to Berlitz tapes for the last several days. And the moment the flight attendant spoke to her in French on Air France, she felt paralyzed. She understood what she’d said but couldn’t answer. She just hoped they spoke English at the National Archives. She was planning to go there on Monday.

She had booked a reservation at a small hotel on the Left Bank that someone in her office had recommended to her years before. She and Ted had always wanted to go to Paris, and never had. They had gone to the Grand Canyon, and an art fair in Miami instead. That was as far as they got. And now here she was, going there alone, while he started a dig in Egypt. They were on separate paths forever now. But she liked the one she was on better, and felt good about it.

The weather was beautiful when she got to Paris the next morning. It was still chilly and felt like winter, but the sun was shining brightly, and she took a cab from the airport to her hotel. She managed to tell the driver in French where she was going, and he understood her, which was a major victory for her. She was traveling on a new passport, because her old one had expired. She hadn’t left the country in that long. But now here she was. She was giddy with excitement as they drove into town. And the driver couldn’t have planned his route more perfectly. He drove down the Champs Élysées, where she could see the Arc de Triomphe, across the Place de la Concorde full of Japanese brides having their photographs taken in their wedding gowns, and then they drove across the Seine, onto the Left Bank, and he took her to her hotel. She caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower on the way.

The small hotel was clean, and her room was tiny. But there was a bistro across the street, a drugstore down the block, a dry cleaner-everything she could need. After she dropped her suitcase in her room, having managed to check in in French, another victory, she walked across the street and sat down at a sidewalk café and ordered lunch. She was doing great so far, and she felt like the mistress of her own fate as she watched people wandering by. There were a lot of couples kissing, men on motor scooters with girls wrapped around them, or the reverse. Paris looked like a city of couples, but for some reason she didn’t feel lonely there. She was happy and excited about what she was doing, and she couldn’t wait to go to the archives on Monday. She just hoped she’d find someone who spoke enough English to help her. And if not, she’d manage in her rusty French. Much to her amazement, she wasn’t even scared. Everything that she was doing felt right.

After lunch, she wandered through the narrow streets of the Left Bank, and eventually found her way back to her hotel, without asking for directions. And she lay on the bed in her room that night, looking at her notes on Wachiwi again. What she wanted to find now was some mention of her and the marquis somewhere, hopefully at the French court, and maybe then she would discover how she had met him, if it mattered. She had married him and had his children, which was enough. But locating some history of her at court would be the icing on the cake, or what the French called la cerise sur le gâteau, the cherry on top of the cake.

Brigitte explored St. Germain des Prés further on Sunday, and went to church. She walked to the Louvre, and strolled along the Seine. And feeling like a tourist, she stood and watched the Eiffel Tower, hoping it would sparkle for ten minutes on the hour, as it did at night. There was no sign of that in the daytime. She had forgotten how much she loved the city-it was beautiful and part of her heritage. So was Ireland, through her father, but she had never had any particular interest in that, nor affinity for it. France was so much more romantic and more fun to read about. She had always been interested in French history, maybe because her mother talked about it so much, and after she was eleven, her father wasn’t around, so her link to her Irish ancestors had vanished.

Sunday went by faster than she had expected, and she had dinner at the bistro across the street from her hotel. The food wasn’t terrific, but it was good enough, and before she went to bed, she walked back to the Seine again, and watched the Bateaux Mouches drift by, all lit up. She could see Notre Dame in the distance. And the Eiffel Tower did its sparkler act for her at last. She was thrilled by it and felt like a delighted child as she watched. The cab driver had told her on the way in from the airport that it had been doing that since the year 2000-it sparkled for ten minutes every hour. And even Parisians loved it.

She was excited when she went to bed that night and she woke up early. The hotel served croissants and coffee in the lobby and she helped herself to some and then took a cab to the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was on the Quai François Mauriac, and it was open when she got there. She went to the information desk and explained what she was looking for and the approximate years. They sent her upstairs, where a librarian clearly had no desire to help her. She simply looked annoyed and didn’t speak a word of English. It was a far cry from the help she had gotten from the Mormons in Salt Lake.

Brigitte carefully wrote down on a piece of paper what she wanted, what kind of books, and the span of years and subject, and the woman handed it back to her with a stream of hostile French. Brigitte had no idea what to do, and had an overwhelming desire to burst into tears, but she controlled herself, took a breath, and tried again. Eventually, the woman just shrugged, tossed the paper back at her, and walked away. Brigitte stood looking after her, and wanted to hit her, and instead she started to walk away in defeat. She knew she would get nowhere. She wanted to regroup and figure out what she was going to do now. Maybe she had to forget Paris as a resource and go straight to Brittany instead. She turned around to leave the desk, and as she did, she bumped into a man behind her, and expected him to shout at her too. Instead, he smiled.

“Can I help you? They’re not very helpful to foreigners here. You have to know what you’re looking for very specifically,” he said in excellent English. He had been listening to the exchange. He reached for the paper, and Brigitte handed it to him without a word. He looked as though he was in his early forties. He was French, but spoke English with a British accent, as some educated French people did. But he was obviously fluent. He was wearing jeans and a parka and loafers, and had hair almost as dark as hers. He had warm brown eyes and a nice smile when he looked at her, and he took the piece of paper and approached the desk again. The same woman came up to it, and he explained smoothly in French what he believed Brigitte wanted. The woman nodded, disappeared, came back, and gave him the exact location of the whole section Brigitte was interested in. He hadn’t asked for anything different than she did. He had just said it in better French.

“I’m sorry. They’re not very nice here. I come here all the time. I can show you where the section is. I did a book on Louis XVI last year. I know where it is.”

“You’re a writer?” she asked as he led her to the right section. There were desks and chairs and benches, and endless stacks of books.

“I’m a historian turned novelist because no one buys history unless you lie about it and make it more interesting. The truth is that the real stories are even more intriguing, they’re just not as well written. You’re a writer too?” He handed her back the piece of paper, with a smile. He was of medium height with slightly tousled hair that gave him a boyish look. And he definitely looked French. He wasn’t sexy, he was friendly. She smiled to herself, thinking that Amy would have said he was “cute.”

“I’m an anthropologist. I’m researching some family history for my mother. Or I was. I fell in love with it, and I guess now I’m doing it for me. I’m hoping to find some diaries about the French court. You wouldn’t know of any, would you?” He seemed to be her only hope now of locating anything here.

“There are an enormous number of them. You just have to wade through them. Anything in particular?”

“I’m looking for accounts of the Sioux Indians that Louis XVI invited to the court as guests, and an ancestor of mine who was a marquis.”

“That sounds interesting. You ought to write a novel about it,” he teased.

“I only write academic nonfiction that makes no money and puts people to sleep.”

“So did I, until I started writing historical novels, which is actually a lot of fun. You get to play around with history and add fictional people to the real ones, and they do what you want. Most of the time anyway.” He seemed interested in what she was doing, and he had been very helpful to her.

He went in pursuit of his own research then. Brigitte took down a stack of diaries in the section he had pointed out to her, but she found no mention of Wachiwi or the Margeracs, so it turned out to be a lost day. She ran into him again when she was leaving the archives late that afternoon. She had been there all day, without even stopping for lunch. She had brought an apple in her purse and ate it while she continued reading.

“Did you find anything?” he asked with interest. She shook her head, looking disappointed.

“That’s a shame. You have to keep at it. It’s here somewhere. Everything is,” he said calmly. But he knew his way around. Brigitte didn’t.

“What are you working on?” she asked politely as they left the building together.

“A book about Napoleon and Josephine. It’s hardly an unusual subject, but it’s fun to write. I teach literature at the Sorbonne, so that pays my rent. But the books help a bit too.”

He was very friendly and open with her, and he introduced himself as they stood on the front steps on the way out. He said his name was Marc Henri. His name sounded familiar, but it was a fairly ordinary French name.

She saw him again the next day as she made her way through the stacks. She still hadn’t found anything of interest when he wandered over to her in the late afternoon. And she was exhausted from reading in French. She had to use a dictionary constantly, which made it tedious work.

“What is the name of the ancestor who was the marquis? Perhaps I can find him for you,” he said helpfully, and she wrote it down for him. “We can cross-reference him in their lists.” And five minutes later Marc had found him. She was embarrassed by how easy it was for him, and how difficult for her. But the archives were confusing, and it wasn’t her language.

They looked up Tristan de Margerac together, and it listed his Paris address in 1785. It was on the Left Bank, and she had a feeling it wasn’t far from where she was staying. She wondered what the building was now. But it said nothing about his wife.

“We might find him in some diaries tomorrow,” Marc said hopefully, “if he went to court often. Did he live in Paris all the time?”

“No, the family seat was in Brittany. I’m planning to go there next week, to visit the château.”

“You have very fancy ancestors,” he teased her, and they both laughed. “Mine were all either paupers, priests, or in prison. What about the Sioux Indians you’re looking for? Are you related to them too?” He was kidding, and didn’t expect a positive response when she nodded.

“The marquis married one of them. She was a Sioux Indian, the daughter of a chief in South Dakota. I’m trying to figure out how he met her. I think it must have been at court. But I don’t know how she got there, or to France. She’s an amazing young girl.”

“She must have been, for a French nobleman to marry her. It would be interesting to know how that happened, wouldn’t it?” She told him about her research with the Mormons and at the University of South Dakota then, and he was intrigued. “That is fascinating. I can see why you’re pursuing it. I feel that way about Josephine Bonaparte when I read about her. She was a bewitching woman too. And so was Marie Antoinette. I’d give you some books to read about them, but they’re all in French.” He casually suggested a drink to her on the way out, and feeling somewhat swept away by their mutual interest in history and research, she agreed. She didn’t usually go out with strangers, but there was a café nearby and he seemed like a nice man.

“So tell me, what do you do when you’re not chasing your relatives all over France? Do you teach anthropology or only write books?” he asked her, as they sat at a table in the café.

“I worked in the admissions office of Boston University for ten years.” She was about to tell him she had just quit, but decided to tell the truth. “I got laid off. That means I got fired, and a computer took my job.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. What are you going to do now?”

“This, for a while. And then I’ll probably go back to work in the admissions office of another college. There are a lot of them in Boston, that’s where I live.”

He smiled as she said it. “I did a master’s in literature at Harvard, and one at Oxford. I had more fun in Boston. Where do you live?” She told him, and he said he had had an apartment about four blocks from hers. It was a funny coincidence, and then she realized why she had recognized his name. “You did a book about a little boy who looks for his parents after the war, didn’t you? I remember your name now. I read it in translation. It was incredibly touching. They were in the Resistance and had been killed, and another family takes him in, and eventually he married their daughter. It was the sweetest book I ever read, although it was very sad.”

He looked pleased. “That little boy was my father. My parents actually. My mother is the daughter of the family that took him in. My grandparents were killed in the Resistance. That was my first book. I dedicated it to them.”

“I remember. I cried like crazy when I read it.”

“So did I when I wrote it.” She was impressed that he had written that book. It had been beautifully written even in translation, and very poignant. It had haunted her for weeks after she read it.

“You know, you look a little Indian,” he said, looking at her.

“The woman at the Mormon Family History Library said that too. I think it’s just because I have dark hair.”

“I love the idea that you’re part Sioux. How exotic. And how interesting. Most of our histories are so boring, and look at you. An Indian great-great-great-great-whatever-grandmother, who came from America and married a marquis.”

“Better than that, she was kidnapped by another tribe and ran away from her captor. She may have killed him, and then escaped with a Frenchman, or at least a white man, and wound up here. No mean feat for a woman in 1784.”

“Those are powerful genes,” he said admiringly. But so were his, she remembered from the book he’d written. His grandparents had been war heroes and were decorated by de Gaulle posthumously. They had saved countless lives before they lost their own.

“So what about the rest of your life? You write academic books. You worked at a university until recently. Are you married?” He seemed interested in knowing more about her. And so was she, about him. But she was sensible about it too. No matter how appealing he was, she was going home in a few days, and he lived here. So even if they liked each other, all they could ever be was friends. More than that made no sense. She wasn’t into casual sex or sleeping with men she’d never see again. And she was still feeling raw after the breakup with Ted. So at best they might be friends. Nothing more.

“No, I’m thirty-eight, I’ve never been married, and my boyfriend and I just broke up a few weeks ago. He worked at the university too,” she answered simply and honestly.

“Ah,” Marc said with interest, “both academics. Why did you break up?” He knew it was a little rude to ask her, but he was curious anyway.

“He went to Egypt to run a dig. He’s an archaeologist, and he wants to stay there for several years, and he figures it’s better like this, going our separate ways. So we broke up.” He was surprised by what she said.

“And you? Were you heartbroken?” He was searching her eyes as he asked, and she shrugged.

“Not really. Disappointed. I thought it was forever. I was wrong.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact about it, more so than she felt. It was still fresh, and not yet healed.

“I had a relationship like that too,” Marc volunteered. “I went out with a woman for ten years, and we broke up last year. She said she realized she didn’t want to be married and have children. I thought she did. I was waiting for her to finish medical school. And when she did, she didn’t want me. It feels stupid after ten years. But I realized afterward that we hadn’t been in love with each other for a long time. We were in the beginning, for the first few years. After that it was just convenient and easy. Somehow you drift along on the river, and one day you wake up and you’re someplace you don’t want to be, with someone you realize you don’t know. I’ve never been married either. And after that, I’m not sure I want to be anymore. I gave ten years of my life to that relationship. Now I’m enjoying my freedom and doing what I want. I don’t regret the woman, but I’m sorry I stayed in it for so long. I kept thinking it would grow, but it never did.” It was exactly what had happened to her with Ted. Nothing had grown. “It took me a while to get over it, but I’m fine. We’re friends now. I take her to dinner once in a while. She hasn’t met anyone else, and I think she’d like to come back, but I won’t. I like my life now.”

“I don’t think Ted and I will end up friends. Geography, if nothing else. And I was pretty upset about it… mostly at myself. I made a lot of assumptions that didn’t apply. I missed all the signs.”

“We all do that sometimes. I did it too. Now I’m forty-two and a bachelor. It’s not what I expected, but I’m fine like this.” He seemed to have come to terms with it, as she had with Ted.

“Me too,” she said quietly. “I feel like those posters that say, ‘Oops, I forgot to have kids,’ but I did. I was too busy being a kid myself. I think working at a university does that to you. You forget how old you are. You think you’re one of them.”

“I agree. I like the class I teach, but I wouldn’t want to be there full time. It’s a very insular life.” He finished his glass of wine then and smiled at her. “Shall we take a walk and see where your illustrious ancestor lived?” She had made note of the address at the library that day.

“That would be nice.” She liked his openness and honesty, and he was interesting to talk to. She liked him a lot. She was sorry he didn’t live in Boston, he would have made a good friend.

She took the address out of her bag, and he had remembered it himself. It was only a few blocks away from her hotel on the rue du Bac. They found the number easily and looked up at the house when they got there. It was a once-beautiful building that looked somewhat frayed now. The doors to the courtyard were open, and they walked in. Marc explained to her from the signs that were posted that it was occupied by government offices now, as many beautiful old houses on the Left Bank were. But you could see easily what the house had once been, with stalls for the carriages that were garages now, and tall windows, and Marc explained that there was probably a big garden on the other side of the house. It was a handsome place, and as she looked up at it, Brigitte felt the magic of knowing that Tristan de Margerac had once lived there when he was in Paris, and almost certainly Wachiwi had lived there with him. They had no doubt used it when they went to court and stayed in town.

They wandered back out to the sidewalk, and he walked her to her hotel. He asked if she was going back to the archives the next day, and she said she was. He suggested lunch and she agreed. It was fun having someone to talk to about their projects, as she hunted for Wachiwi, and he researched his book.

Marc was waiting for her in the lobby of the library the next day when she arrived. He had looked up some references for her, and she hit pay dirt this time when she checked them out. She almost squealed with delight as soon as she found them, and went running to find him. She had come across a diary where a lady-in-waiting from the court talked about the Marquis de Margerac and his beautiful young Indian bride. She said that she had been at their wedding, in a little church near their house on the rue du Bac. She reported that there had been a small reception at the house afterward, and the next day the new marquise had been presented at court to the king and queen, and she even mentioned Wachiwi by name.

It thrilled Brigitte to realize that their wedding reception had been in the house that she and Marc had looked at the night before. This was incredible, and it was all so real. It still said nothing about how she had come to France. And then, miraculously, later in the afternoon, Brigitte came across another of the same woman’s diaries on her own, chronicling court life. She mentioned the birth of Tristan and Wachiwi’s first child, and his christening. She said they had named him after the marquis’s dead younger brother, who had accompanied Wachiwi from America to France. The woman said that he had saved her, and was planning to marry her, but had died on the trip over. And eventually Wachiwi had married his older brother the marquis instead. So that was how she had come. The younger brother, Jean the count, had rescued her and brought her from New Orleans to Brittany by ship, as the diary explained. The Frenchman mentioned in the oral histories in South Dakota was probably he. Brigitte couldn’t help wondering if the Crow chief Wachiwi had supposedly killed when she fled was really killed by Jean who rescued her from them. How he had found her no one would ever know. But now she knew how Wachiwi had come to France. And there were also mentions of the Sioux chiefs who came to court from time to time, but apparently Wachiwi was not related to any of them. The woman who had written the diaries found it a little odd that their king was so obsessed with them. She thought the Indians who visited court an unruly lot, but she had nothing but kind things to say about Wachiwi and said she was a lovely girl, and made the marquis an excellent wife.

Brigitte pored through several more of her diaries, but found no further mention of the marquis and his bride. But now Brigitte had it all.

She was wildly excited when she talked to Marc about it at the end of the day, when they went for a drink again so she could report what she’d found. He said he had had a good day too, and had found some excellent diaries himself, about Josephine, written by her ladies-in-waiting, and one dearest friend.

“And what are you going to do with it now?” Marc asked her with an interested look.

“I don’t know, write it up for my mother for her family history. That was the whole purpose of this.”

“That was fine when your ancestors were ordinary people, but they no longer are,” he said with a serious look. “This girl is remarkable. You have to write a book about her. If you fictionalize it a little, it would make an extraordinary novel. Or even just the way it is. Like my grandparents and parents. Sometimes there is no greater romance than the truth.” Brigitte was unsure, but it was certainly more interesting than the women’s vote. That much was sure. But she was scared to tackle Wachiwi’s story and not do it justice.

“I’m fascinated by it because I’m related to her. But do you think other people would be?” Brigitte asked hesitantly. This was way out of her normal realm.

“Of course. You read my book about my father, and he was just a little boy. This girl traveled across continents, oceans, was kidnapped by Indians, married a nobleman. What more do you want? Do you know what happened to them during the Revolution? Were they killed?”

“I don’t think so. Their death dates are later than that.”

“Many of the nobles in Brittany resisted, and escaped the guillotine. They held out, and they were a long way from Paris, which helped. But a lot of the Royalists and nobles in Brittany survived. Some even managed to keep their châteaux. The French call those Royalist resistants after the Revolution Les Chouans.”

“I’ll find out about that when I go to Brittany. I’m going to go down there in a few days.” And then she had a crazy idea, since she hardly knew him, but he had been so helpful so far and they were becoming friends. “Do you want to come?”

He didn’t hesitate for an instant. “I’d like that very much.” And then she looked nervous. She didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. She wasn’t propositioning him, she was asking him as a fellow researcher and a friend. He had understood that. He didn’t want to spoil their budding friendship either, and he was equally aware that she was going back to the States in a short time, when she finished her research.

“There’s no romance involved, by the way,” she clarified, and he laughed. American women were so direct. It had shocked him a little when he went to graduate school in Boston. A Frenchwoman wouldn’t have said that in quite that way.

“I understood that. Don’t worry. I can help you with your research there.”

“You’ve been fantastic,” she said, and meant it. He had been invaluable to her, and Providence had brought him to her. If he hadn’t turned up, she would never have been able to work the Bibliothèque Nationale on her own. She would be eternally grateful to him for that. She just didn’t want to get carried away with him romantically. It didn’t make sense, and they’d just get hurt, no matter how appealing she thought he was. They were much better off staying friends, and apparently he agreed.

“I know a nice hotel there, by the way. I’ll make the reservations, and yes, I know, two rooms, and a chastity belt for the lady.”

“I’m sorry.” She blushed a little. “Was I rude?”

“No, you were honest, and I like that. We both know where we stand.”

“It would just be silly to start something, and then I go back, and we’re both sorry.”

“Are you always so sensible?” He was interested in her as a person, and liked what he knew so far.

She thought about it and then nodded. “Probably too much so.”

“You don’t have to go back, you know. You said you don’t have a job. You could work at the American University of Paris, they have an admissions office, and you could write your book here.” He had it all worked out, much to her surprise. He liked organizing people’s lives, and helping them get what they wanted. But she didn’t want to write a book about her relatives, nor stay in Paris. She was going home.

“I haven’t said I would write a book.” She smiled at him. He was looking and sounding very French, and he wanted her to stay. He thought her a very interesting woman, more than anyone he’d met in a while.

“Why don’t you talk to them at AUP? You could spend a year here, and see how you like it.” She laughed at the thought. He was crazy. She lived in Boston. And had a book to finish about women’s suffrage. But Wachiwi was so much more interesting than the vote. She was what women’s freedoms were all about, and had been two hundred years ahead of her time.

He didn’t press the point, and they stayed at the bistro and had dinner, and she had an odd feeling as she walked back to the hotel. Tristan and Wachiwi had lived in the house so nearby. They had married, had their wedding reception, had a baby. Their lives had happened so close to where she stood, and hundreds of years later they seemed so alive to her. It was as though they were reaching out to her. She couldn’t get them out of her head.

She wondered if Marc was right and she should write a book about them, as a tribute to their love. She was beginning to like the idea. She even liked his suggestion that she work at AUP, but she had a life in Boston she had to go back to, or thought she should. Paris was so seductive, with its sparkling Eiffel Tower, its bistros and cafés, and even Marc, whom she barely knew but liked so far. But she couldn’t let herself get seduced by any of it. She was determined to resist the charm of Paris, and even his. They would go to Brittany, she would see what she could find there about her ancestors, and then she was going home. This was real life, not a book. And in real life, people met, nothing happened, and you went home. Or they went off to Egypt and told you that they weren’t a commitment kind of guy after six years. That was real life. Not a guy like Marc. Or the marquis.