“If the Germans take Paris . . . ,” she said, and broke off, not being able to imagine it.
“Then we’ll treat for peace,” said her mother matter-of-factly.
“What peace can there be with the Hun?” Her father’s stories of 1870 mingled with the pathos of the papers, Belgian babies murdered, women violated, villages laid to waste and plunder.
“They’re not all savages, sweetheart.” Maman’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “One can’t believe everything one reads in La Patrie.”
Aurélie hated being made to feel young and naive.
“They’re not all poets, either,” she retorted.
Paris drew a particular type of German nobleman, or at least her mother’s salon did. They all seemed to quote Goethe, read the poetry of Rimbaud, and have strong feelings about the works of Proust. It was very hard to imagine the Germans of her mother’s entourage spitting babies on the spikes of their helmets.
But they were Germans. Goodness only knew what they might do. What they might be doing even now.
“No, I imagine not,” said her mother. “But a man’s a man for all that. When the war is over, one might even be inclined to like them again.”
Like them? There were thousands dead, thousands more likely to die, whole areas of France overrun by soldiers. How could one forgive something like that? How could one take tea with a conqueror?
“If you were French—” Aurélie bit off the words, knowing she was only opening herself up to mockery. “Never mind.”
“Will you pardon me?” With a gracious smile for her guests, Maman rose from the settee and came to stand by Aurélie. The smell of her mother’s distinctive perfume, the particular way her silk skirts swished around her ankles as she moved struck Aurélie with a combination of old affections and resentments. Once, those had spelled comfort to her; recently, they had been the opposite. Aurélie stood stiffly as her mother set a jeweled hand on her arm. “Darling, I’ve lived in Paris since I was nineteen. More than half my life. Don’t you think I care just a little?”
Yes, that her coffee not be served cold.
She was being unfair, Aurélie knew. Her mother wasn’t like the Marquise Casati, who had gone into hysterics in the lobby last week—not because of the men dead or the babies butchered, but because the reduction of staff had meant her breakfast had been delayed. Her mother did care. In her own way.
“It’s not the same for you,” said Aurélie, hating her voice for cracking. “You’re not a Courcelles.”
Her mother glanced fleetingly across the room at a glass curio case lined with velvet in which rested a single item: the Courcelles talisman, a scrap of cloth dipped in the blood of Joan of Arc. One could hardly see the precious relic; her mother, as a young bride, had had it cased in an elaborate pendant of gold, studded with precious stones, so that all one saw was the glow of rubies and diamonds, not the frail remnant of the holy martyr.
Aurélie’s father had been appalled, but he hadn’t interfered: it was a tradition that the talisman was to be carried by the women of the family, ever since a long-ago Comtesse de Courcelles had knelt at the feet of the Maid of Orléans and tried to stanch her blood with fabric ripped from her own dress. The saint had blessed the comtesse, and, ever since, the talisman had protected the house of Courcelles, conferring victory in battle or safety to the bearer, depending on whom one asked.
The relic had been passed down in Aurélie’s family ever since, carefully guarded—until her grandfather had lost it in a game of cards, and her father had suffered the humiliation of having it bought back by an American heiress, a bribe for a betrothal.
“I know I’m not a Courcelles. I gave up trying to be a long time ago. It wasn’t worth the effort.” Maman looked up at Aurélie, twin furrows in her celebrated forehead, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “My dear, I understand your pride. I do. Your father was always rotten with it. No, no, we won’t quarrel about your father. All I mean to say is, you mustn’t let your ancestors rule your life. There’s more to you than your lineage.”
“My life is my lineage. I have a sacred trust. . . .”
“Over a bit of old rag?” As Aurélie glowered at her, her mother said gently, “It’s a beautiful story. I was taken by the romance of it, too—when I was nineteen.”
As if patriotism, as if service to one’s country, were a child’s game that one might outgrow!
“It’s not romantic,” Aurélie protested. “Not if by romance you mean it’s something woven of untruths.”
“It’s woven of fibers,” said her mother. “Like any other cloth. I’m not saying it’s worthless. There’s value to be had in symbols. But you can’t really believe that a saint’s knucklebone can cure a cold—or that a scrap of fabric can confer victory in battle. Not on its own. What is it Voltaire said? God is on the side of the big battalions.”
“Not always.”
“No. Sometimes the smaller battalion has the better marksmen.” Aurélie’s mother touched her cheek; her perfume tickled Aurélie’s nose. Part of Aurélie wanted to shake the hand off, the other wanted to lean against her mother’s shoulder, as she had done when she was small, before she had grown taller than her mother, taller and more aware of the oddities of their existence. “A talisman is only so precious as the confidence it confers, nothing more, nothing less. Rather like a love potion.”
Her mother would never understand. There was a discreet tap on the door. “That must be the coffee,” said Aurélie, ducking away from her mother’s touch and yanking open the door.
It was the coffee, but not brought by a porter. Instead, a man in uniform stood with the coffeepot, which he raised sheepishly in greeting. “When I said I was coming here, the maître d’ asked if I’d bring this. I gather they’re rather short-staffed?”
“Monsieur d’Aubigny!” Maman kissed Jean-Marie on both cheeks, deftly relieving him of the coffeepot. “I’d thought you were in the cavalry, not the commissary.”
“Ha ha,” said Jean-Marie uncomfortably. That was one thing Aurélie had always liked about him; he had never found her mother’s jokes funny. “I’ve just come to say goodbye. I’m to leave tonight.”
“Didn’t your regiment depart last week?” Aurélie wasn’t sure how her mother knew these things, but she always did.
“Well, yes,” said Jean-Marie, “but I was given leave to stand godfather at my niece’s christening. They’ve all gone away without me. I’m to join them at Nanteuil-le-Haudouin.”
“How will you get there?”
“Take a taxi, I suppose.” He wasn’t, Aurélie realized, joking. “They’re lining them up in the Place des Invalides. Someone ought to be able to squeeze me in.”
“But we can do better than that!” Aurélie glanced at her mother, then flushed, annoyed at herself for looking to her for approval. “There’s my car.”
“There’s no one to drive it,” said her mother. “Gaston joined up weeks ago.”