Waiting for the Queen (31 page)

The baby—Marie—looks like a fat little queen in a white gown with a wide lace collar. For her crown, a puffy, lace-edged cap. Eugenie carries her to her cradle, and we take turns rocking it while Eugenie sings the first verse of “Over in the Meadow” in French and then I in English. Soon the baby falls asleep smiling. But we go on rocking her cradle—and watching her. She is so sweet. So perfect. Now there is just the gentle thumping of the cradle moving back and forth over floorboards. 'Tis very like slow heartbeat. I give thanks for Eugenie and for this new little one. I pray that she and her family will find here, in our new country, all that is good. It is much to ask, I know, but let it be,
s'il vous plaît!

In a wonderful whirl of thought, I imagine Eugenie wearing a necklace of river stones, round and polished and holding within themselves water, light, and time, so much time. And the stones linked with silver, just as the river has linked us all together. Surely if Father can make such fine boots, John and I can fashion such a thing.

We shall learn.

Eugenie

We travel downriver some distance farther than Sylvette and I traveled last spring—or was it winter?—on our little floats of ice. This time our boat, poled by Mr. Kimbrell, John, and Papa, lands at a small settlement, and Monsieur Kimbrell arranges for a wagon with seats in its bed to convey us somewhere. Seeing that wagon, I shudder, but holding Sylvette, I climb in and sit alongside Maman and Papa. Little Marie has been looking about in wonder. The river today is a glorious amber color, with great green trees on either side. For Marie, all this will be something as natural as our château, with its fields and meadows, was for us. Something even of solace, perhaps.

A short distance beyond the settlement, the wagon comes to a stop on a rise, quite high, above the Susquehanna. The others jump down nimbly. Maman and I take much longer to gather our gowns about ourselves and, aided by Papa, carefully climb down. And of course I have Sylvette and Maman has little Marie. Monsieur Kimbrell leads the way to several enormous flat rocks stuck into the cliff like tabletops.

“Prayer rocks, they're called,” Monsieur Kimbrell tells us. He explains that American Indians once came here to give thanks for rain or a good harvest or to offer prayers of supplication. I keep tight hold of Sylvette's leash as we stand on one of the flat rocks and look to the west, the
south, and the east. In each direction, a seemingly endless landscape of forested mountains undulates to the pale blue of horizon and dissolves there in mist.

Mon Dieu
, such a vast land, this America. It is where we shall remain, Papa and Maman have decided. Maman does not wish to risk Marie's life in France, or mine.
Perhaps, Eugenie, when you are both much older, you shall return—if it is safe. Meanwhile, we will create what we must, here
.

Even my bones seemed to tremble when I heard those words. I knew not whether with joy or sadness.

And I have made a decision as well. I shall paint! Papa and Maman responded with one word.
“Magnifique!”
Then they embraced me with what might have been an American bear's strength.

None of this could we have imagined last autumn, down there in our wet boats, in the mist and fog.

“Look, Eugenie,” Hannah whispers. She points to a plain bounded by a horseshoe curve in the river. “Azilum.”

So charming, really, viewed from this height. So pastoral and lovely. The tiny
maisons
and grazing animals. The rows of fruit trees and vines. The vegetable gardens and flower gardens. I close my eyes and thank Our Lady and then look once more at the river, today a wondrous vein of light.

“Come,” Papa says. “Our
pique-nique
awaits!”

“One moment, please!” I beg. Quickly I find my sketch book and pencil while Hannah keeps hold of Sylvette's leash.

It will be my first painting.
Azilum
. Everything I am seems to flow down to my hand, and then there is the Susquehanna, curving as if protectively around the clearing with its tiny structures and smaller animals and trees. Then forest and distant ridges, and clouds. There must also be light!
I must learn how to create a mantle of light gilding trees and river and houses and animals and boats. Everything.

When I close my sketchbook, my fingers seem to flutter with life. Perhaps angels have taken up residence there.

In the shade of a great tree, Hannah and I open baskets and set out bread, newly churned butter, tomatoes, cucumbers, and savory smoked fish. And, too, a small wheel of Estelle and Alain's Camembert cheese. We place everything upon the braided rug Hannah has made especially for today and which she is giving us for the new room in our
petite maison
. Even the Queen herself might have treasured this rug, in its autumn forest hues.

Soon Hannah, John, and Mr. Kimbrell will return to their farm. I cannot bear to think of this, yet know they cannot remain here indefinitely. There is so much work on their farm now, Hannah says, for it is harvest time.
Their
farm—Papa has seen to this. But they are to come back here next summer. Until then, another winter! We will manage. We are no longer the same helpless creatures we were last autumn. And I need all that time, for I want Hannah and John to be proud of me when I show them my drawings and paintings. Hannah does not know this yet, but
Azilum
will be hers.

I meet Maman's eyes as I begin slicing one of my loaves on a cutting board of smooth wood. She fears a mishap, but I slice with care and then lean back. The aroma alone is enough to bring tears.

Together we give thanks in French and in English and begin our feast.

Author's Note

Waiting for the Queen
was inspired by its setting—now a state historical park in northeastern Pennsylvania. Even today the place is remote, windswept, and surrounded by forest. In 1793 it must have looked like some forbidding place of exile to those members of the court of Versailles and other nobles who sought sanctuary there after fleeing the terrors of the French Revolution. I wondered what the nobles might have felt, having lost so much and then journeying so far only to find a frontier wilderness of half-built cabins and looming forest. Accustomed as they were to silk and damask and servants, but now having to make do with cramped dwellings, plain wooden chairs, and little if any help, how would these nobles react? Would they give way to grief and despair or become stronger as a result? And what about when they learn of the Queen's execution by the guillotine? How hard might that be for them?

These were some of the thoughts and questions that arose in a rush of emotion as I walked about the site one somber November afternoon, a cold northwest wind sweeping across the Susquehanna River. I was the only visitor that day, and the solitude heightened all of my thoughts. I could almost see the nobles there in their finery, wondering where on earth they were. At that moment,
Waiting for the Queen
began taking shape in my imagination. As it did, I was inspired, too, by the way the word
Azilum
merges both French
and English
(asile
+ asylum) just as the geography and experience of the settlers blended French and American cultures into something altogether new.

Two of the novel's characters are historical personages: the Vicomte de Noailles and the Marquis Antoine Omer Talon. And several characters alluded to are historical figures: Marie Antoinette, of course; her husband, King Louis XVI; their daughter Marie-Thérèse; and their son Louis-Charles, the titular king upon his father's death in January of 1793. Louis-Charles died, it's believed, two years after his mother's death.

In the late 1780s and 1790s, the French nobility was regarded far more sympathetically in America than in France. There, during the French Revolution, nobles were scorned, hunted as traitors, tried as criminals, and very often executed. America had no such animosities toward the French aristocrats but generally regarded them with favor and sympathy. The young Marquis de Lafayette, for example, was a popular hero of the American Revolution. He served as a major-general under General George Washington and became Washington's personal friend. Serving under Lafayette was Louis-Marie, Vicomte de Noailles, who in France, ironically, had worked toward abolishing aristocratic privileges.

So when the Vicomte de Noailles, along with the Marquis Antoine Omer Talon, hoped to purchase land in America so that fleeing French aristocrats might find sanctuary and found a settlement, they encountered not resistance but a great deal of enthusiastic support, particularly from two Pennsylvanians, Senator Robert Morris, financier, merchant,
and land speculator, and John Nicholson, then comptroller-general of Pennsylvania.

Senator Morris owned lands in the north-central wilderness of Pennsylvania and knew of an area—a meadowland of about sixteen hundred acres formed by a horseshoe bend in the Susquehanna River—that might be a good place for the aristocrats' settlement. Titles to the land had to be purchased from nearby settlers and laborers had to be hired for building cabins for the first émigrés, who arrived in the autumn of 1793.

By 1798, some were calling the place Frenchtown, but it was also coming to be known as French Azilum or, simply, Azilum. It was a prosperous settlement. Its log houses had porches and well-built chimneys, shutters, window glass, and, inside, fine wallpaper. The village had its own chapel, dairy, gristmill, blacksmith's shop, and distillery. Surrounding the 413 house plots along a gridiron pattern of avenues were farm plots, orchards, vineyards, and pastures. Settlers even produced potash and pearlash, which could be bartered for other goods. Potash and pearlash were used in making fertilizer, soap, glass, and gunpowder.

Eventually, there were a number of shops, a school-house, a theater, and at least two inns. Famous people came to visit this “French Arcadia.” Among them were Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, a French statesman and later advisor and confidant of Napoléon Bonaparte. The hugely popular Marquis de Lafayette also visited. Louis Philippe, Duc de Orleans and a future king of France, was another such grand visitor.

But
Waiting for the Queen
takes place before all of this
success—in fact, it takes place right at the beginning, when all is new and raw and unsettled and, for those first émigrés, quite daunting.

Napoléon Bonaparte eventually granted amnesty to the French émigrés, and many returned to France in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Some chose, however, to move to coastal cities in the southern United States, such as Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans. Others returned to Santo Domingo in the Caribbean. Most, finally, did not adapt to frontier life or choose to mingle with their new American neighbors. By the time of French amnesty toward the aristocrats, there was some hostility toward the French settlers because France, now at war with England, had begun seizing American ships. America wanted to remain neutral, and this angered France. Despite this animosity, a number of émigrés chose to stay in America, and a few even remained in the beautiful hill country surrounding the plain in the bend of the Susquehanna River.

It's common belief, tinged with local folklore, that Marie Antoinette and her two surviving children (two others had died before the French Revolution) intended to seek sanctuary at Azilum. No document has yet surfaced to support this belief, though recent archaeological excavations at the site do appear to indicate that, in addition to the smaller structures, a “grand house” had been built at the settlement. What is historically accepted, though, is that there were plans to free Marie Antoinette and her children from prison and get them out of France. And, too, news of her execution did take months to reach the settlement. More may be learned in years to come.