My mother taught me to wash wounds with salt water and honey; she applied plasters made of mustard and calendula. We concocted salves from lavender and beeswax, and balms with olive oil and thyme. Rosemary, yarrow, and comfrey leaf reduce itching and scarring; Saint-John’s-wort helps with aching joints and nerve pain. Teas of slippery elm bark, sage, and peppermint cure all manner of intestinal ailments, and a shot of pear brandy from our rapidly dwindling cellars was always appreciated.
We didn’t have much, but we brought the poor, aggrieved soldiers bowls of soup, crackers with honey, slices of pain ordinaire au levain. I do not care for nursing, and am not by nature a physician, but more than anything, these unfortunate men, some merely ailing while others are permanently mutilés, needed rest and recuperation, so the nursing was not strenuous.
Through it all, my father left his study less and less; his wool business had included a robust trade with our neighbors to the north, and was now abandoned. Some of our fellow Rémois had looked upon us with suspicion because of those German ties, but now none of that matters.
After the invaders marched into Reims, two soldiers pounded on our still-standing door and demanded to know why we had not evacuated with the others. I explained, in their own language, that we were tending to the sick. They laughed, less interested in the fate of the “dirty French poilus” than in the fact that I spoke German. They thought it was a fine thing, and suggested that I could teach the children of Reims to be good German subjects.
I barely refrained from spitting on them.
After a mere eight days, our valiant French forces wrenched control of Reims away from the Boches, but the invaders squatted down on the surrounding hills and pelted us with their weapons from afar.
What they could not hold, they were determined to destroy.
Chapter Seven
According to the itinerary Hugh had prepared, Rosalyn was to take a taxi from the airport to a small hotel in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of Paris. She would spend a couple of days getting over jet lag while playing tourist, and then pick up a rental car and drive to Champagne.
Even wrapped in her heavy winter coat, Rosalyn shivered as she dragged her luggage to the taxi stand and joined the long queue. But as she progressed toward the head of the line, her heart started to pound. Nausea roiled in her belly.
Who turns down a free stay in Paris?
Rosalyn, that’s who. She simply couldn’t stomach the memories. Rosalyn abandoned her place in line, got herself a double shot of espresso, lugged her things over to the rental car counter, and spent half an hour changing her reservation to start right away. Gaspard Blé was out of town, but his office manager had sent an e-mail with the code that opened the door and assured her she was welcome to arrive at any time and make herself at home in Chambre Chardonnay.
She entered Blé’s address in Cochet into the GPS on her phone, but after tracking down the dark red Renault rental in the dimly lit parking garage and loading her bags, Rosalyn studied the proposed route on a paper map to orient herself.
The old map was soft with wear, tearing at the corners. Hugh had plucked it out of a pile of papers in a dusty corner of his office with a flourish, declaring, “Here she is!” Rosalyn ran her fingers along the furred seams, sparing a smile for her occasionally pushy but mostly delightful friend Hugh, wondering how long he had had this map and on what adventures it had accompanied him. It had always amazed her that Hugh was still single; once when Dash teased him about it, Hugh remarked that all the interesting women his age were already taken, and joked that not everyone could marry their young interns.
Charles de Gaulle Airport sat well northeast of Paris, en route to the Champagne region, which meant Cochet was less than two hours away. It took nearly that long to drive from Napa to San Francisco on bad traffic days.
Then again, in California, Rosalyn didn’t have to deal with roundabouts. Jittery from the strong espresso, Rosalyn went round and round the first few times before figuring out her exits. The route was a confusing alphabet soup of roads: take D401, also called E50, toward the A4. From there, D23E5 to D23 to D24. What’s wrong with exit numbers? she thought grumpily. Better yet, signs reading, “Rosalyn, it’s this way”?
Once she made it to the autoroute, driving became easier and she could relax a little. Soon the outskirts of the city fell away, replaced by lush green forests and farmers’ fields.
The light began to dim along the horizon, the cold winter sun going to bed. The flight had arrived a little after three; it had taken a while to retrieve her bags, pass through customs, and rent the car, so Rosalyn hadn’t left Paris until after five. There were numerous stops along the autoroute advertising fuel and snacks, but she kept going, determined to reach Cochet before it was pitch-black.
But once she exited the autoroute, Rosalyn started getting truly hungry—a ravenous, panicky emptiness amplified by lack of sleep and the body’s confusion induced by jet lag.
Out in the countryside, there was no fast food and, as she’d assumed, certainly no 7-Elevens. Rosalyn passed through one small village after another, their boulangeries and butchers long since closed for the night. Hugh’s voice whispered in her ear: she should have gone to Paris, where businesses and restaurants stayed open late.
She drove past acre upon acre of vineyards and other crops—wheat and alfalfa, she guessed—rimmed by tall trees. The landscape was studded with ponds and streams, the fields interrupted now and then by stone farmhouses, some featuring steep turrets and colorful roofs tiled in patterns.
There were no food options at all, apparently, so Rosalyn munched on almonds and a PowerBar as she drove, reflecting upon the irony of being so hungry in what was pretty much universally acknowledged as the culinary capital of the world. Why hadn’t she grabbed something besides espresso in the airport? She began torturing herself with the thought of hot, glistening pommes frites, or a luscious pain au chocolat. Perhaps a nice duck à l’orange, or . . . what other dishes were the French famous for? Crêpes, maybe? She didn’t know that much about French food, when it came down to it.
Dash had done the ordering for her while on their honeymoon. Mostly, she remembered the bread.
Patches of snow and ice gave testimony to the season, and leftover Christmas decorations, limp and sagging from weather, still adorned the town squares. Homes were dark, their wooden shutters not for show the way they were in Napa—these were actually closed at this hour, giving the villages an unfriendly, stockaded look. Green neon pharmacy signs flashed vulgarly on sleepy main streets, an incongruous modern touch. Old town houses with shared walls—maisons de village—came right up to the street, with at most a tiny walkway separating them from narrow cobblestone roads. The roofs were made of earth red tile; the jagged stone was golden or gray, some partially covered in a mellow yellow stucco.
This is going to be all right, Rosalyn told herself as once again she drove round and round in a roundabout, trying to decipher road signs. Even with the GPS—featuring a polite British voice that asked her to “Please bear right”—it was hard to figure out which exit to take. But what was the worst that could happen? She might wind up sleeping in her car, which would be not great but doable. After all, this was France. Nothing bad happened in France, right?