Glamour in Glass (22 page)

“Will
you
?”

He grimaced, seeming aware of his contradiction. “When we receive word that Napoleon is marching, I will retreat to Brussels. Wellington is there, and he means to hold the line at Quatre Bras.”

“You think he can?”

“If any man among us can, it is the Duke of Wellington.” Vincent tapped the paper with his forefinger. “I do not wish to paint a pleasant picture. Gilman says that we have 67,000 troops here. With the Prussians and the Dutch we nearly match Napoleon’s numbers, but not his strength. Wellington is short of heavy cavalry, and though our men are better equipped than Napoleon’s, his are all veterans of at least one war and are fiercely loyal to him.”

He could offer her no better comfort than that he
thought
Wellington could hold the line. Jane tried to be content with that, but her fears often outpaced her rational mind. She tried to hide her concerns from Vincent, for she was sure that many of them derived from her situation: though she had only just begun to show, she was daily aware of the fact that she was increasing.

As the season began the turn into summer, Jane faced an interesting choice. Vincent had gone into town with M. Chastain that morning to prepare a glamour. The bourgmestre wanted elaborate festivities on the occasion of William of Orange’s coronation as the monarch of the newly formed United Kingdom of the Netherlands. While M. Chastain likely needed little aid with his students in force, Vincent had hoped to get a sense of who held what beliefs while there.

To occupy her time, Jane sat in the parlour sewing a christening gown for her child, in the company of Mme Chastain and some of the other ladies of town. Mme Meynard had been reading the novel
Amélie de Mansfield
by Sophie Ristaud Cottin to them. They had just reached the point when Amélie was contemplating throwing herself into the river when the reading was interrupted by Yves Chastain. Or, rather, Yves entered in an entirely decorous manner; his younger brother Luc followed him, protesting loudly about some ill.

“Luc, quiet yourself.” Mme Chastain lowered the fringe she was working on and gave her son such a glare that he was silent in an instant. “Now. What is the trouble?”

“I want to go too, and Yves says I must stay home.” His lower lip stuck out to an alarming degree.

Mme Chastain applied to her elder son. “Go where?”

“My chums and I are going to the celebration in town.” He pointed at Luc. “He is too little to keep up.”

“I am not.” Luc stamped his foot.

“You are not impressing me with your maturity. Pray, do not stamp indoors.” Mme Chastain tapped her finger against her crocheting needle. “As your father is doing the glamour, I will confess that your interest surprises me. You have shown little interest in his work before.”

Yves winced. “But there will be fireworks.”

Mme Meynard laughed. “You see how jaded one becomes living with a master glamourist. What are fireworks but colour and light?”

“They go boom!” Luc said, in all earnestness. “Please, Mama, please. Please.”

Jane listened to all of this with great interest. Here seemed an excellent opportunity to observe Yves Chastain and his friends to see if she might spy a clue, for if anything would betray their sentiments, then surely the celebration of the new kingdom would do exactly that. The difficulty she faced was in not knowing if her interest would be remarked upon. Left to her own devices, Jane would likely have chosen to stay in rather than venturing forth into the unrest that would surely surround such an event. On the other hand, did any here know her well enough to think it odd if she chose to go? She need only make her interest plausible.

Jane took another stitch and then dropped the gown with a sigh. “I will confess to being somewhat restless, and an excursion sounds appealing. Surely the city council would not have the celebration if there were any real danger from Napoleon.”

Mme Chastain tapped her crochet hook again. “You may have something there. I will own that I am restless too. Mme Meynard, what do you think?”

“Even if Napoleon were to march straight toward us, it would be another two weeks before he could get here.” She closed the novel with a snap. “I say we
all
go.”

The dismay on Yves’s face was not far from being matched by Jane’s own feelings, though hers she kept admirably concealed. Having a contingent of women following him would surely curtail any potential exploits. Still, it afforded a better possibility for observing him and his compatriots than any opportunity that had yet arisen.

Mme Chastain tousled Luc’s hair. “And as it is a historic occasion, you and Miette shall both come.”

The boy expressed his delight with exuberance.

“I would say that historic is overrating the case.” Mme Meynard pointed the novel at Mme Chastain. “It will only be historic if we remain the United Kingdom of the Netherlands for more than five years, of which I have my doubts.”

“Fie. You always have your doubts about everything.”

With events thus settled, by the evening, the party had grown from a small excursion to a quite a large group. They were joined on the streets by throngs of other denizens of Binché, who apparently all had the same sense of restlessness that had afflicted those in Jane’s company. The royalists seemed to predominate, if one could judge by the profusion of white ribbons. Orange also fluttered everywhere in honour of William of Orange, so the evening seemed filled with a collection of small flames.

As they passed the A l’Aube d’un Hôtel, three boys on the verge of manhood tumbled out of the front room and crowded around Yves. His friends were so quickly introduced that Jane only caught the name of M. Giroux, a slight, bookish fellow who was the only one to pause long enough to acknowledge the introductions. The other boys were all for charging ahead into the centre of town.

Their enthusiasm was infectious, and the Chastain party quickened their pace, soon arriving in the square at town’s centre. A stage had been erected and glamours hung from it, making it seem to glow in the night. Added to that were lanterns to light the speakers, and that, along with the orange banners, made a sort of pyre of spectacle. The bourgmestre approached the front of the stage with M. Chastain directly behind him, in position to amplify his words to the crowd. The substance of the speech was what one might expect at such an occasion, full of rhetoric about glorious history and unity and other empty phrases which politicians bring to any ceremony, stripping the meaning from even the most important events. Jane peered around, seeking Vincent, but he was not immediately obvious, so she fixed her attention on Yves.

One of the boys asked how long the speeches would last. Yves shrugged in response. “The old man only talked about the glamour. I found out about the fireworks from Giroux.”

They spoke some more of wishing to see the fireworks, but their words carried no shocking disclosures. As the bourgmestre wrapped up his speech, Yves nudged M. Giroux with his elbow. “Fireworks now, eh?”

A shout rose from the crowd. Rather than fireworks, an enormous glamour blossomed almost directly above them. A massive French tricolour flag as it had appeared under Napoleon’s reign waved over the crowd. Honeybees swarmed around it, dancing a beautiful fleur-de-lis in the air, and the French national anthem seemed to trumpet through the square, overpowering the last of the bourgmestre’s words. Shocked into silence, the bourgmestre could only stare at the phenomenon. The glamourists on the platform were less sanguine. M. Chastain abandoned his place by the bourgmestre. Pointing, he shouted at his students to find the rogue glamourist and stop the display.

On a second-story balcony of the building in front of which Jane and her companions stood, a young woman leaned against the wall in a stance designed to mimic insouciance. From the stage, she must be obscured by the glamour, and even Jane’s position offered little but the woman’s chin and hands. Her fingers moved in familiar patterns, which made Jane certain that she was working the glamour, though to manage so large a display, she must surely have help.

All of M. Chastain’s students, save the two women, leapt off the stage and forced their way through the crowd. Behind them, Vincent bounded onto the stage from the stairs at the rear and clapped M. Chastain on the shoulder. His mouth moved, but Jane could not make out the words. Then her husband spread his legs wide and inhaled deeply. Though she could not see the folds, by his movements, Jane could imagine that he was spinning out a fold of glamour to try to reach the other glamourist’s strands from a distance. M. Chastain joined him in a similar stance.

The span across the square was very great, and even working together, Jane had doubts that the two men would be able to effect any change. All the while, the bees continued to buzz overhead and the anthem played on.

Jane almost let her sight slip into the ether to see whence the other folds came, but stopped herself. The crowd jostled around them, elbows and feet pushing against their neighbours in an effort to stay upright. Jane lost sight of Vincent as she staggered in the crush. Yves supported her arm and with a word, arranged his friends around her and the other ladies in a determined cordon. Though he still had the slight stature of a boy, in truth no taller or broader than Jane herself, he exuded a sense of being more than his size.

When Jane could see the stage again, M. Chastain was bent at the waist, hands on his knees. Even from where she stood, she could see his chest heaving. Of Vincent, there was no sign.

Had he been standing in Jane’s spot beneath the balcony, he could have stopped the display as surely as he had worked the glamour on the clock tower in his university days. Jane thought that even she could break this one from where she stood.

If only she were able to perform glamour.

How much harm could it do to simply let her vision slip into the ether? Jane shook her head to clear it of the temptation. Even if she looked, what would she do with that information? It would tell her nothing that she did not already know. Above her head, the young woman worked glamour. Coming to a decision, Jane supported herself on Yves’s shoulder and pulled off her slipper. Though she had no real hope, she threw it at the glamourist.

The shoe fell far short and landed in the crowd, provoking a renewed outcry. Mme Meynard gasped. “Mme Vincent, have you lost your mind?”

“I see one of the glamourists.” Jane pointed at the young woman.

Before she had fairly finished speaking, Mme Chastain cried, “Your shoes, ladies. Yves?”

Grinning, he and his mates accepted the shoes and hurled them upwards. Catching their enthusiasm, if not their meaning, a display of shoe tossing spread through the crowd. Jane winced as a shoe went through a shop window, shattering a pane of glass. She hoped that the damage would be limited.

Then, one of the shoes—Jane knew not whose—smacked the young woman directly in the face. The glamour overhead stopped with an abruptness almost shocking to the senses.

The bourgmestre cleared his throat, his voice unnaturally loud in the silence. “Well. Now that the interruption is over, let us proceed to the fireworks for which you have all come. Long live King William the First! Long Live the United Kingdom of the Netherlands!”

The crowd, still confused by the exploit, responded with but a ragged cheer and threw more shoes into the air, but when the fireworks rose from the rooftops, they seemed more in homage to Napoleon than King William.

Jane stood on her toes trying to see her husband, but there was no sign of him or the students. She had little hope that he would be careful, so although it was contrary to his mission, she would rather the culprits escape than have Vincent discover them.

At every burst of light overhead and every crack of the fireworks, Jane flinched.

“I am certain they are well.” Mme Meynard put her arm around Jane and patted her. “Poor thing, you are trembling.”

She had not realized it until that moment. “It is nothing, just the excitement.”

“What is the matter?” Mme Chastain peered at Jane. “Are you well? You are not, are you.”

“Please do not concern yourself. I am only wondering where Vincent has gone.”

“Is he not on stage with the others?”

Jane had been studying the crowd with such intensity that she had not seen him return to the stage. Indeed, he and the students were once more on the stage, working an enormous glamour in concert with one another. They rendered a silhouette of Gilles and the dragon, which fought in time with the fireworks. Much like the shadow plays after dinner, these figures had been simplified to be easier to manage. Jane could only presume by their actions that they were passing the threads from one student to the next in order to avoid being overcome by the effort of working such large folds at such a great distance. For though the base of the folds were firmly rooted to the stage, the tops of the figures reached nearly two stories over the audiences’ heads.

It was a beautiful spectacle, but compared to the French flag and the bees, it seemed imperfectly rendered. The display was intentionally subtle to avoid distracting from the fireworks, but the effect compared poorly to Napoleon’s grand showing.

A question occurred to her, and she applied to Mme Meynard. “Why were there bees with the flag?”

“Napoleon’s emblem is the bee, the symbol of hard work. All the Bonapartists wear it.” As Mme Meynard answered her, Jane felt as if a thousand slipknots of glamour had just shifted and revealed a new pattern.

Anne-Marie wore a pendant of a honeybee.

It had been given to her by Lieutenant Segal, who wore the tricolour cockade of Napoleon. Jane’s breath caught in her throat. It did not seem possible that M. Chastain could have brought a Bonapartist into his house … but Jane remembered Anne-Marie’s fear that she would lose her place.

Not for a beau, then, but for her politics.

Eighteen

The Honeybee Considered

Around Jane, her companions and the other townspeople continued their festivities unaware of the epiphany which Jane had suffered—and, in truth, “suffered” was the only word for what she now felt. She had trusted Anne-Marie; and yet, considering her actions, Jane could not but wonder at her own blindness. When taken with other details, Anne-Marie’s interest in where the Vincents had been prior to Binché lost its friendly nature. Jane had been so relieved to have a confidant who spoke English that she had allowed her far more familiarity than any other servant. Added to Anne-Marie’s curiosity, there was the bee pendant, which she had been so anxious to keep a secret. Her attraction to Lieutenant Segal came as no surprise when viewed in the light of her loyalty to Napoleon’s France.