Jacques-Louis is at the Observatoire in Paris with his father, the only boy amongst the scientists, writers and philosophes gathered together to watch the moon through an enormous glass. He smells cigar smoke and touches the lace at the edges of his sleeves. He watches the moon consumed by the earth’s shadow. But instead of the utter blackness he has anticipated, the moon begins to glow the dusky red of a Tuscan lamp, colouring walls and se eping into faces and furniture. How is such a thing possible? How can colour disappear as if it were a contrivance? The green of trees and plants, the blue of his new frock coat, the white lace, were they all disdained by the moon? He had taken the moon entirely for granted, a fruit that was constantly ripening, blooming and then diminishing. The poem his father had him learn only a week ago ... But for my fate on the turning wheel of heaven Forever whirls, for ever changes shape Even as the face of the inconstant moon That never ke eps her form two nights the same ... His father turns and smiles at him, his skin and teeth reddened and spectral, as if he is in the grip of death. He encloses Jacques-Louis’ hand in his, a lar ge strong hand that warms the boy’ s own. ‘A perfect alignment of sun, earth and moon, Jacques-Louis,’ his father says. ‘There is nothing to fear . Soon enough, the moon will be free.’ Jacques-Louis waits for things to be right again. The men around him are arguing some point and his father is suddenly keen to walk home on this mild evening. They make their farewells and dismiss the waiting carriage. The red suf fusion is dissolving and his father is returning from the undead. But the sense of desolation does not quite leave Jacques-Louis. Colour, it seems, is in contention. Or had it been his eyes? Perhaps there will be more of this, a certain unreliability to all that appeared solid. He is perplexed.
The limbs of oak trees meet above them. His father says this boulevard was planted in the reign of Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil. Yet it is shards of moonlight that draw Jacques-Louis’ attention. Tiny scimitars are rippling and glimmering in every direction, scattered and shivering across the cobblestones. ‘See, Jacques-Louis?’ his father says. ‘The leaves of the oak trees are projecting the moon above as it emerges from the shadow of the world, casting and multiplying these images onto the path. It is a camera obscura!’ His father laughs and Jacques-L ouis laughs, too. They hold hands, father and son, and whirl within a forest of moons, a kaleidoscope of lunar crescents. Jacques-Louis feels himself bound to forces unknown. ‘These are important times,’ his father says as they resume their walk, both a little breathless from their spinning. ‘There are ideas in the new America that are awakening France, Jacques-Louis. That might awaken all of Europe. What you have witnessed this very evening is that all men, even boys who are yet to become men, are inconsequential. The darkness is no bubble or sphere of blown glass but leaks out in every direction, an infinity, and what are we? Pffft. Just a puff of dust and time. It dwindles a man’s sense of himself, and so he must attend to his inner world. That, Jacques- Louis, is at the heart of enlightenment.’ ‘And Henriette? ’ Jacques-Louis asks. ‘Must she also attend to these thoughts?’ He cannot imagine his sister’s life as inconsequential. Nor his mother’s. ‘Ah, a woman is a different creature altogether ,’ his father r eplies. ‘It is a mystery what a woman is and, as such, we have no chance to understand them. But if we love them well, delight in their sweet and powerful mysteries, protect them, celebrate them, then we are better men. That is a truth, my love, that you will discover in good time.’ Henriette, his only sibling, is four years older than Jacques-Louis. She and his mother are at the chateau in Reims while he is in Paris with his father. Jacques-Louis has never before come to Paris alone with his father, but his father says it is time to begin the larger education of his mind. Soon he will be sent to an eminent school and, in pr eparation, he must become fluent in Latin. Meanwhile, a German physician has been employed to tutor him. Jacques-Louis must read Diderot and Descartes, his father insists. Spinoza and Locke.
‘We are pr eparing the soil and planting the crops that will fruit into the young man I see in you,’ his father says. ‘I know you love the industry of agriculture, but you must balance this with the cultivation of the mind, the intellect, Jacques-Louis.’ Henriette is passionate about the writings of John Locke who talks of equal rights for women. Henriette has declared she will not marry—or if she does, and she is unhappy with her prince or duke, she will divorce him immediately . There is a new parliament in France and now women can divorce, they can own property , they can vote. Henriette says it is all bubbling into a soup that will spill across Europe, and their mother says, ‘But wait until you fall in love and taste those pleasures, my daughter . Perhaps then you will be less inclined towards soup and wish to sup instead from the entire menu of a woman’ s life.’ Jacques-Louis’ family are the noblesse d’épée , the most honour-able of nobles in all of France. His father is a duke and his mother a duchess. His father’s father was a general in the King’s army. He was wounded in battle against the Prussians and died before Jacques-Louis was born. ‘Kings take death lightly,’ his father had said, for he too had led troops into battle, ‘but still it is a great honour to fight for the King.’ The ten-year -old Jacques-Louis is missing bud break at the chateau. The mist hanging low in the valleys and dew beading on the leaves. The tiny bursts of green erupting along the vines. The tightly folded leaves beginning to unfurl, every variety of grape into its own unique shape. Later in summer , plumped by rain, warmed by sun, those same leaves will hide grapes hanging heavy and full, and he and Philippe, their vigneron, will walk between the vines, lifting away the foliage. Philippe’ s father was the vigneron before Philippe. Mathilde, his wife, is their cook and knows all Jacques-Louis’ favourite foods. Sometimes Philippe offered Jacques-Louis grapes to taste and invited him to consider the tart brightness. ‘This is why we pick champagne grapes earlier than grapes for table wines: to preserve that vibrant piquancy before the grapes become too sweet. But will it be a good year? Or has the late rain diluted the flavour? Has the storm that damaged much of the hillside caused a more intense flavour to emerge in the grapes that survived the battering? All these things must be considered. Many can grow grapes, but very few
can make a great wine. It is your destiny, as it was your father’s and his before him ... a great legacy .’ Jacques-Louis has been lowered into the barrels to press the grapes with his feet, toes de ep in skin and juice. He has walked the caves with his father, inspecting the rows of bottles in the flickering light, listening to the muffled hush of their feet in the dust of white chalk. ‘Observe the pale yellow of this one, Jacques-Louis,’ his father said. ‘Watch how the bubbles float up in the glass as if they are in no hurry at all. Smell the bouquet. A scent of caramel and toasted brioche, yes? Taste a little. What do you find?’ ‘It tastes of summer ,’ Jacques-Louis said. ‘Can you tell me more?’ his father asked. Jacques-Louis took another sip and held the wine in his mouth as he had seen his father do. He swallow ed and said, ‘The bees are buzzing in the sunshine, and there is honey and lemon tart and soft cheese.’ ‘ Alors ,’ his father said, ‘you have the palate of a winemaker indeed.’
‘Dangerous words travel fast,’ Jacques-Louis’ father says to the friends gathered in their library. It is a room that contains two thousand volumes on shelves that reach all the way to the ceiling. Books with golden words on their spines and covers of red leather and brown Japanese vellum. Some of the pages are soft and almost transparent, the print tiny. The words are in Greek and Latin, Italian and French, English and German. Some are so old they are k ept in drawers and must be opened with the greatest care. Within them are circles inside circles, seven-pointed stars, the chemical syllables of cosmic law , and illustrations of beasts of cave and water . ‘They all await you, Jacques-Louis,’ his father has told him. ‘Here is a feast pr epared for your mind that you can dine upon at will, at any hour of the day and night.’ There is no room in the chateau where Jacques-Louis is not welcome. Even when he has guests, his father always gestures for his son to enter, ordering a cushion to be brought by a servant so that the young marquis might sit beside his father ’s chair. Gatherings have been more frequent at the chateau of late. Often they take place after Jacques-Louis is asle ep, but he smells the residue of eau de cologne, wine and tobacco the next morning. Friends and family arrive in carriages that are no longer gilded or fanciful, their house arms painted over to obscure their identity . They come after sunset, cloaked and hooded against the cold. Snow falls, the trees are bare. The King and Queen are both captive. His mother says this winter is perhaps the darkest France has ever known. Visitors no longer wear feathers or fur, diamonds and silks. The house has slowly secreted its silver and crystal, its porcelain and paintings. Henriette is piqued. ‘But where has it gone, Maman?’ she asks. ‘Where is the silver cup and tray for my chocolat chaud ?’ Maman reminds Jacques-Louis and Henriette that all men and women are born free and equal in rights. The family must be seen to embrace these
new circumstances. They are not to worry. Certain items, treasured items, have been sent away. All will be restored in due course. But there are heated words and fierce debates in the library . ‘We are the citizenry and this is our music,’ says de Dolomieu. ‘ All men are created equal ,’ says Oncle du Pont, who is visiting from America. He is holding a large tract of paper, a copy given to him in Philadelphia by his friend Benjamin Franklin. ‘This is where it started. Let us not forget it.’ And he reads: ‘ They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. Amo ng these are Life, Liberty , and the pursuit of Happiness ... Furthermor e, whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or so abolish it ... to instigate a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organising powe rs ... most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness. ’ ‘Liberty and equality will conquer despotism,’ Papa says. ‘The Americans have proven it.’ ‘But on the borders other nobles conspire to undo every st ep we might make for reform, agitating for war and tumult,’ r eplies du Pont. ‘No good will come of it. Especially for the King.’ ‘We must not pretend that a new government will be formed as if it is all a game of chess being played by a skilful hand,’ says Condorcet. ‘We wait for progress from above, but all that is happening is reaction from below ,’ says Madame Dalmas. ‘The King needs reminding that, while unpleasant, songs of sedition cannot limit royal expenditure, nor will the proliferation of books and bulletins, pamphlets and opinion s feed the hungry,’ says Desmoulins. ‘And the people are hungry .’ ‘Where does the law begin and end when unrest rumbles within every institution? Magistrates arrested in their homes, the clergy, too. It is only a matter of time before we must side with or against ...’ r eplies Maman. ‘Perhaps a time will yet come when the sun will shine only upon free men who know no other master than Reason,’ says Condorcet. ‘Rubbish,’ responds Madame Dalmas. ‘Paris,’ says Papa, ‘our city of lights and theatres, cafes and chestnut trees, our magnificent nation, will never give way to something uncivilised.’
‘It has already given way to something uncivilised,’ says Madame Calonne. ‘They will have all our heads before they are done.’ ‘Privilege and hierarchy do not assure us of good leadership. As Wollstonecraft and Paine have written, a nation must have the right to abolish a government unsuited to its interests,’ says Maman. ‘The notion of an hereditary government is as ludicrous and dangerous as hereditary judges,’ says Oncle du Pont. ‘But not hereditary nobility?’ asks his father . There is an awkward silence. ‘France will never embrace a r epublic,’ says another man, whose name Jacques-Louis does not know . ‘We are fools if we think it will not come to that for all of us,’ retorts Madame Calonne. ‘The King is as good as dead. His children, too.’ Christmas comes quietly and d eparts. Then it is January and still there are gatherings. Men and women debate in the library night after night, and Jacques-Louis listens until he falls asle ep beside his father . ‘France is a r epublic. Why do we need a King?’ ‘The monarchy is all but dismissed. There will be no right of veto.’ ‘You know Pitt will never acquiesce to our annexation of the Austrian Netherlands.’ ‘So you would stir the British to war?’ ‘We must build government, not anarchy .’ ‘And rebuild our army to give us victory all the way to the Rhine.’ ‘Surely the nation exists before everything. Its will is always legal; it is the law itself.’ ‘There are no laws above the laws of man,’ Jacques-Louis hears his father say . ‘Only the laws of nature,’ says Jacques-Louis’ mother. ‘And no one will ever tell me what God I might pray to.’ The King is executed. Spring arrives with no respite from the turbulence of ideas, the shortage of food in Paris and the general disorder . Further afield French soldiers conquer the Belgians and the Austrians. Holland is invaded and a royalist uprising is quashed in Lyon. Young men die or return home wounded and broken. More young men are sent to fight.
Their house in Paris is being used by the army for the manufa cture of guns, and on their trips to the capital Jacques-Louis and his father stay in another family apartment on the rue Saint-Honoré. All the while his father impresses upon Jacques-Louis the importance of this momen t. He must watch and listen, and in all things he must remember moderation.
Jacques-Louis’ father goes to Paris again as the unrest increases. He is distracted and unusually short-te mpered. Jacques-Louis hears wagons leave in the night. His father dresses as a craftsman. The carriage is never used. Friends have already d eparted for America. Others have moved to England. Jacques-Louis’ German tutor returns to his homeland. Henriette is full of stories she has heard from the servants. Stories of Monsieur Guillotin’ s invention employed to eliminate arguments and dispatch unwelcome adversaries. Stories of heads being severed and corpses carried away . The press is printing words that foment discontent in London and Paris. Treatises are being read in taverns, workshops and coffeehouses. Pamphlets, newspapers, magazines and plays inflame arguments of despotism, entitlement and liberty. Jacques-Louis’ father tells him that a conversation on the nature of society has begun that cannot be ignored. Across the Channel, the English lords are rumbling their concern. They do not want the French unrest to infect England. English gaols are spilling over with the poor and unlucky who have run afoul of justice. Dissenters, opponents and ruminators, unable to hold their tongues, are sent to join them. Disease, hunger and discontent spreads. Government men infiltrate meetings across London, Birmingham and Manchester . Spies operate amongst the French sympathisers. The instigators are charged and sentenced. There is to be no discussion of the removal of the privileges of nobility anywhere in His Majesty’ s empire. In France the summer is bene volent and warm. Philippe tells Jacques-Louis that there is a promise of a good harvest and a fine vintage, but there are not enough workers. His father tells him that too many young men are dead in foreign fields, and too many have returned home broken in body and mind, unable to work the farms that feed the rich and the poor alike. The grapes
rot upon the vine for want of picking. Wheat moulds. Grain prices continue to rise. Cows give milk but the cost of transport has risen. In Paris the new prisons built within the abandoned convents and monasteries reek of sullage and bloom with disease. A maximum price is set for bread but this enrages the market women. Faction fights faction. Women’s political organisations are forced to disband, which infuriates Maman and Henriette. A new Law of Suspects defines those who by their conduct, relations, utterances or writing had shown themselves partisans of tyranny , of federalism and enem ies of liberty . Henriette tells Jacques-Louis that those people are relieved of their heads. The Queen is dispatched by the efficient guillotine only a few months after her husband. A tyranny of bloodiness unfurls. Unholy alliances are created between rival factions and organisations. Many reach for control of government. Desmoulins and his friend Danton are both beheaded on the same day . ‘This is the nature of re volution,’ Jacques-Louis’ father says. ‘The extraordinary becomes ordinary. The extreme becomes commonplace. Violence becomes the instrument of moral transformation. Who knows when it will end, or how? Who will be victors and who will be victims? The prudent attempt to plan for an uncertain future.’ He is called to Paris again. Maman does not want him to go, but nor does she wish her husband to be silenced, to cease his public arguments for an end to the Terror. It must stop. Someone must reason with Robespierre. She insists on accompanying him. They d epart on a beautiful afternoon. The pond in front of the chateau is blooming with pink lilies. There, in that reflected world, no premonition or concern exists. ‘They will return,’ Henriette says, as they watch their parents ride down the long avenue of sycamores and poplars. It is the last time Jacques-Louis and Henriette will ever see them.
Jacques-Louis is concealed within a trunk for he cannot be trusted to play his part. Henriette has insisted upon this, and Philippe and Mathilde have concurred. At great personal risk, they are posing as Henriette and Jacques- Louis’ parents. ‘Will they come for us?’ Jacques-Louis asks Henriette. She looks momentarily bewildered. ‘They are dead. They will never come.’ Then she realises her brother means the people who imprisoned their parents and judged them guilty . ‘If we are not here, they cannot find us,’ says Henriette. ‘If we are stopped on the road between Reims and Calais, you must not make a sound or they will cut our throats.’ ‘Did Papa do something wrong?’ he asks. ‘It is not what he did or did not do,’ Henriette says. ‘Now you are the duc and you will never be safe.’ ‘Because of who I am?’ ‘Because of what you are,’ she says. The wagon is stopped on the outskirts of Paris and the passengers are interrogated by men and women with knives and pitchforks. Henriette is already the actress and has no trouble convincing them she is indeed the daughter of this hard-working couple. Mathilde becomes a sans-culottes who knows all the right things to say and sing; she tells these arbitrary re volutionaries that she is going home to care for her father. One of the interrogators is also from the region and knows of her family . Jacques-Louis waits in tr epidation, rolled inside bedcoverings and squeezed into the impenetrable darkness of the wooden trunk. He cannot stop imagining the guillotine slicing off the head of first his mother and then his father. Where are their bodies? Where has death taken them? Where have their thoughts gone?
He had heard Henriette ask Philippe, ‘Where are my parents’ bodies?’ ‘They are in the Picpus Cemetery , Mademoiselle Henriette,’ Philippe had r eplied. Jacques-Louis understands his parents are with others who have died. He closes his eyes and sees heads cut away from bodies, heads tossed into wheelbarrows, bodies jolted away over cobblestones slick with blood. Jacques-Louis screams silently into the blankets. Only when the wagon stops, and the trunk that bears him is stowed in some desultory inn where the rooms smell of onions and dogs, can he be released to unfold his numbed limbs. As he attempts to sle ep, squeezed into a lumpy bed beside Henriette, he thinks of his mother walking with her chin up—not walking to her death, but as if she is on her way to pick peonies from the garden. She kneels to pull a weed, then rests her head upon the wooden block. And the blade falls. Crossing from France to Scotland, he knows only that he is sick and the sea is unforgiving. In Leith, Philippe and Mathilde deliver their charges into the care of Doctor and Mrs Douglas; Mrs Douglas is their mother’s cousin. There had been a plan in place, Jacques-Louis learns: he and Henriette, their mother and their father, would all travel to Edinbur gh together and stay there until the turbulence in France had abated. Mathilde and Philippe were to care for the estate until they could return. Household items, favourite books and a few treasured heirlooms had been sent ahead in anticipation of their new home. Financial arrangements had been made. But only Jacques-Louis and Henriette arrive. The doctor and his wife welcome the siblings into their small family. They have a daughter , Hannah, who is four years old. ‘It is lucky he was so young,’ Jacques-Louis hears Mrs Dougla s say to her husband one evening. ‘In time he will barely remember . But Henriette ... well, I do not think it will be so simple with that one.’ Jacques-Louis dreams of ravens screeching in the trees. They spread their wings and, gliding down, alight on a mosaic of death to pick at eyes that gaze up at the mottled sky, eyes surprised by death, or the terrible loneliness of an angel. He wakes to find that he has left the bed and curled into a corner of the room, concealed beneath a blanket.
Four-year-old Hannah, with her dimples and shining dark hair, seeks first the attention of her new cousin, Henriette. When Henriette responds with utter disregard, Hannah turns her attention to Jacques-Louis, whose hand she must hold whenever she goes up or down the stairs with him, and when they take a walk between rain showers. Sometimes they walk in the rain under a black umbrella with Mrs Douglas beside them, or with the maid Esther on an errand for the houseke eper . Hannah likes to sit on Jacques -Louis’ lap as he reads to her from a picture book in his accented English, and she corrects him in her Scots, and his tutor corrects him with his Oxford English. Jacques-Louis is unmoored in the wet grey city, with its narrow stone streets and low ceilings. He feels the careful observation of the Doctor and Mrs Douglas, as if he is a frail thing that might break at any moment. He was born to be a duke. He had been schooled in astronomy , philosophy , mathematics and Latin. He had walked the vineyards his ancestors had first planted on the banks of the Marne in the province of Champagne. He had picked the grapes and seen an eclipse of the moon. They had lived in a chateau with countless servants and attended the opera and the theatre in Paris. He had visited the palace at Versailles, where they had walked the halls and gardens and been entertained by jugglers and fools. Who was he now? He was no longer the marquis. He was a duke of nothing. He had no future. Under his pillow he ke eps a soft white kid glove he had found amongst the books and clothes packed for him in the months when the world had grown restless and covered wagons had left in the night. He can smell his mother’s scent upon it. When he wakes from nightmares, he holds it under his nose, breathing it in, wishing fervently that Maman would soon be walking into the breakfast room, bringing music for his lesson. When he turns fourteen, Doctor Douglas suggests that, beyond his normal studies, Jacques -Louis might wish to learn the work of an apothecary . If he finds it to his liking, perhaps in time he can become the doctor’s apprentice. And it is here Jacques-Louis finds at last a modicum of rest from his fractured thoughts. At the university there is a friend of Doctor Douglas who begins to tutor him in biology and chemistry . There is an extensive garden at the university and Jacques-Lo uis learns about the propagation and care of medicinal
plants from across the British Isles, the Americas and the lands that encircle the Mediterranean Sea, the Indies, the Orient and even the Himalayan mountains. In this way, he visits lands capes and climates which, in his mind, are filled with the vibrations of insects, the songs of strange birds and people who wish him no harm. At home, he and Henriette study under careful and patient tutors. They navigate the strange Scottish tongue—a mangled kind of English, Henriette declares. The lack of couture, the soft tasteless food, the low pious skies and the humourless people: Henriette despises it all. ‘They are little more than Highland savages,’ she says to Jacques-Louis. ‘I cannot stay here.’ ‘You will not leave me?’ he r eplies anxiously . ‘Of course I will,’ she says. ‘As soon as I am able. I cannot wait here for you to grow up so that you might be of some use to me. But when you are ready, you will come and find me and we will make our way back to France. You will have a vineyard and I will have a chateau and all of this will be for gotten.’