Post by MARIE EVANGELINE ROQUEFEUIL on Aug 30, 2015 20:55:58 GMT
Marie Evangeline Roquefeuil
The woman stood at the edge of the open window which looked out into one of the largest gardens on the estate. It was the estate where she had lived almost her entire life, save a few years here or there. She was a tall woman with a willowy, thin figure. As a girl, she’d been so slender that a man could put his hands around her waist. Time and children had changed this, though she was still proud of her figure – even if a man could no longer span her waist with his hands. She still considered herself to have retained her figure and her looks into an age past the time when most women bragged of such things. She was proud of that. In fact, she was more proud of those looks of her family which had borne the test of time than of many other attributes – to the point of even vanity really. Not to an extreme, but a little at least. She considered it self-confidence, however. Something any self respecting gentlewoman should have a little bit of – in good company with humility of course. Aside of her slender waistline, she had a good posture, shoulders back, back straight enough to carry a tea tray on her head without even jostling the cups if need be. Hours of lessons as a girl had provided this, as well as the corset she always wore. Her height was tall for a woman, and this she was proud of. Her face was an oval with a slightly abrupted chin. Her skin was as pale as magnolia leaves showing class and good breeding. Highly defined cheekbones and a long, straight nose lent a feeling of regality to that face which was framed by long reddish hair which fluttered in the balmy breeze through the window, which also ruffled the curtain by her hand. Ice blue eyes, which at the moment seemed far away, stared determinedly out of that face. The eyes were the only indication of the fire which burned deep within that woman’s soul. The only thing that set her apart from any other lady of gentle breeding.
“You want to know my story?” she asked, her voice a soft, husky note which somehow matched her regal face. “Then I suppose you had better take a seat.” Her eyes never left the window.
~*~
I was born on September 12th 1789 at seven-thirty in the morning. I’ve been told I was difficult for my mother, who had been awaiting my arrival since sometime the previous evening. I never quite empathized with her until I had my own child years later. I was, at that time, blissfully unaware of any of life’s worries and would continue to be for a good number of years.
My mother had not been a particularly young woman when she and my father married. He had been a second son, not expected to inherit and had spent his youth years sewing many wild oats. These things I did not learn about him until I was quite a bit older. However, when his elder brother died, the Roquefeuil family needed him to become more serious – to prepare himself for life as the heir of the family rather than simply a young military officer using his prestige and wealth to cause one scandal after another. He compromised on the condition that he would choose his own bride – and he spent a further half a decade doing just that. Everyone was surprised by his choice. Though she was quite the beauty and from a very high family with money and land and titles, my mother was seven years my father’s senior and nearly forty years of age when they married. It was said that she would never bear him any children, a fact which I am told made my grandfather sick to think of. Fortunately, or unfortunately as case may be, she did produce him a child within the first two years of their marriage – that was me. However, it seemed their luck ran dry then. No more children followed. At first, I’m told my father was morose about the turn of events. However, he loved my mother dearly, and soon recovered from his lapse into depression about the knowledge that he would never have a son.
He soon came to treat his daughter, me, much in the fond manner he would have done an only son. He taught me many things which a girl in my station might never learn. He taught me the numbers and how to run the estate, about philosophy, about other cultures, about languages and histories of peoples I never imagined could exist until he told me of them. He taught me to ride and to hawk and hunt. The two of us had a special bond, which I still miss dearly even today. My favorite time with Papa was early in the morning. Every morning, just as the sun was rising, he rode out over the fields on his cavalry mount – a big, strong, solid grey gelding, to talk to the peasants beginning their work in the fields. By the time I was four years of age, my father was putting me in front of him on the horse and taking me out with him to talk to them. I became very fond of those people and of those precious moments with my father long before my mother was up and out of her boudoir.
A part of me was aware from the things I heard the peasants speak of and whispered conversations between my parents when they believed me to be in bed, but really I was eavesdropping on the stairs, that things were not all right in Paris, and that our idyllic life was not reality. Trouble was brewing. People were talking about the word that would eventually rip my life in two on more than one occasion – revolution.
The older I got, the more private and inward I became about my feelings – a trend that continues to this day. I do not feel that it is.. appropriate.. for a lady to express many of her innermost thoughts to others. These are private and for her own reflection. I started to feel in such a manner around the time I was twelve or thirteen. At this time, my mother provided a journal for those private thoughts, which I quite enjoyed. It is a habit which I continue to this day – recounting my personal thoughts into a small book with a ribbon for a bookmark. The first afternoon I wrote in it, I remember well that I believed myself to be dying. Little did I know at the time, I had simply begun my monthly courses. I kept this to myself for some time. Eventually, I came to understand that this was to be a new (and unfortunately) monthly plague. My nurse eventually figured out what the problem was and began putting me to bed with feverfew and red raspberry for the cramps, which were horrible. Not long after that, my mother decided that it was time to start dressing me as a lady. This meant corsets, panniers, petticoats, lace, and frilly dresses. I liked the dresses – less the corsets which made it impossible to get up to all of the shenanigans I was used to. At the time, I was quite a wild little girl, enjoying my time playing in the barns and fields, rolling down hills with my hair flying free… I often scraped my knees and elbows – especially when I played on the rope swing in the barn my father put up for me. These things were now considered inappropriate with my new attire. It was not, I quickly realized, just a change of clothing but a change of lifestyle which was expected. For a time, I chafed at this, but eventually accepted it as reality. Now, I think I would feel naked without my corset.
Just after my fourteenth birthday, as the crisp breezes of autumn began, another momentous event which was to dictate the entire course of my life for many years occurred. At the time, I very much enjoyed walking in the woods outside the estate. I had a number of places I particularly enjoyed – a little pond with fish and frogs, a meadow with flowers, and a blackberry bramble. It was here, one afternoon picking berries to make into a tart for tea, where I met Jean-Claude Blanquefort. Jean-Claude was from a neighboring family, though they didn’t have such impressive estates or titles as mine. Jean-Claude was in his late twenties, and bewitchingly handsome, truly. However, he frightened me. Not for anything he did or said wrong, but perhaps it was merely the unknown of someone who expressed so obvious an interest in me. I had rarely been to Paris because of the revolution. Our family was safe and sheltered here. Of course, we lived in style and threw parties and the like, but it was still sheltered. He flirted with me incessantly, coming to find me in the woods on an almost daily basis. At first, I found him amusing. Eventually, I found him tiresome. I, at fourteen, did not feel ready for the relationship which he proposed – a matter of matrimony, of course. Anxious to better his family’s station and in having a pretty, young, vivacious wife, he was anxious to move forward with the relationship in which I expressed little interest. Looking back on it, though I knew I wanted to marry, fall in love, and have babies, I just did not feel myself to be at the point in my life Jean-Claude was at and wanted me to be at. Unfortunately, he believed my reticence to be mere stubbornness and nervousness. Upon failing to procure the response he wished, he went to my father to speak to him on the matter. My father was reluctant to promise me to Jean-Claude if I had not given my consent. However, two things, I am convinced, affected his willingness to do so. The first was that Jean-Claude reassured him that I was merely nervous and that he would be kind to me, a good husband and that I would come around in time. The second, of course, that there was no heir to become the vicomte upon my father’s death. He needed a man, he said, because I could not legally inherit the title or the estate, being female. I could see it was what my father wanted me to do, so I accepted Jean-Claude’s proposal, ready or not.
On our wedding night, which was only a few months later, I required him to sleep in a chair the entire night, insisting that I was not going to let him come near me, and if he touched me I would scream. My tension did not survive our honeymoon. Jean-Claude was able to win me over. However, I cannot say that I found our physicality.. pleasing even from the early days. He was always too.. intense.. about things. Nevertheless, he asked if I would love him, and I agreed to try. And, eventually, I did.
It was Valentines when I started to notice changes that suggested I was with child. At first, I didn’t guess what it might be, but, eventually it became clear enough to me. I was unsure how to feel about it. On the one hand, I understood I was supposed to be happy, but I could not bring myself to feel anything other than overwhelmed and disappointed. I had only just started to adjust to married life, let alone this new situation. For a good deal of time, I pretended it wasn’t happening at all. However, eventually this became impossible. When I could no longer hide it, I was encouraged to stay home and inside at all times. Advice I could only heed for so long. When the summer revels came, I begged to be allowed to go and to dance. And dance I did… dance and dance.. it was as though I was frantic with the desire to move, to be with other people, to be a –part- of something. I wish now, to God, that I had listened to my mother. She advised me against such foolishness. That night the pains started. It was, for certain, the worst experience I had lived through to date. There’s something awful about laying there.. totally out of control of your own body and waiting… waiting knowing that it’s far too soon. No one had to tell me what was happening. And when he came, they took him from me and I barely got to see him. He was so tiny and perfect. He had a little face and fine, light hair, little lips, and tiny fingers curled on each other, feet the size of two fingertips held together. He weighed less than a pound, but he was perfect, and he was gone. I wanted to hold him, but they took him away, saying it would be better for me not to see him. And when they were gone, I went down the hallway to the nursery which had been prepared for him. I sat in the rocking chair which had been so carefully made. I held the blanket I’d been knitting for him and cried until there were no more tears left inside of me – only a great chasm that nothing could ever fill.
People made it their business to keep me busy. I was told it would help. I was told I musn’t be left alone to think too much. It made me angry that they thought I needed to be watched and looked after all of the time, like a child. They didn’t want me to speak of him, it was as if we all had to pretend he’d never existed. I hated that. I hated denying him. He didn’t even have a grave for me to visit. I never knew what they did with the body… I was told I should not be sad, that this kind of thing ‘happens all the time.’ I didn’t feel like that was true. When my father died in January, a few months later, my tears weren’t only for him, but for the baby as well. After his death, I spiraled into a downhill slide of depression which lasted the winter. My memories of that time are few and far between. I stayed in bed most of the time, rarely spoke to anyone. By the springtime, Jean-Claude decided I needed a distraction. He removed me from the estate, and we went to Paris to live for a little while. I know he thought that a change of pace would be good for me.
A rash of miscarriages followed in the coming years, only causing me to doubt myself more on the front of being a capable mother. I was exceptionally relieved when, finally, five years later I welcomed my second son, Henri, into my world. Everyone else considered him the eldest, but in my heart… he was the second. Certainly not.. any less than the first.. I loved him very dearly.. but I just could not put aside the memory of the first. The one I secretly called Arthur. Henri was born on a bright, warm morning. Like Arthur, he took many hours to arrive. I was anxious to hold him and see for myself that all was well with him. Nightmares of another stillbirth plagued the latter part of my pregnancy. I couldn’t speak to anyone about how I felt, however. I had to carry the burden alone. Finally he had come, and I was able to hold him and make much over him and some part of myself accepted that he was mine and I was his. He was the first thing that had ever belonged to me, really belonged. I remember being devastated when they took him away to a wet nurse for the first several months of his life. My heart felt as swollen with tears I couldn’t shed as my breasts with milk he couldn’t use. Barely seeing him for months was perhaps more painful than anything I had felt in some time, but I had to bear it because it was what was expected. I would do it differently now.
Nevertheless, as Henri grew, we became close and shared a special bond. The first years of his life were idyllic. Though Paris and being often at court were busy for me, I always made sure to spend time with Henri. I loved being a mother and fell head over heels into loving the son I’d been given. Perhaps we would have been blessed with other children, I don’t know, but the revolution interrupted that again in 1816. It was then that I met Percy Blakeney. Percy was an English gentleman living in France at the time. When things turned sour, he began attempting to help some of the aristocracy escape. We were fortunate enough that he tried to help us. He would have sent us to England, but I did not want to leave France. She is in me and I am in her – my homeland. I wanted to be at the estate. It would be out of Paris, away from the revolutionaries; certainly not out of danger, but better. Jean-Claude did not agree with my wishes, and we fought many very nasty fights over it. Ultimately, Percy took him to London for a time, while Henri and I returned to the estate. It was the first time I really had control over it. With him gone and us frequently out of contact, it was not difficult for me to begin to manage things myself. I reminded myself of all the lessons my father had given me as a child. It was not difficult to step back into that time, except age and knowledge had made me more capable than then. Henri, for his part, though we remained close, began a love affair with the woods as I had done as a child. I thought little of it. I liked him learning about science and nature and all the woods and the estate offered him just as I had done. I employed tutors who encouraged his natural intelligence and love of those things along with religion, philosophy, literature, mathematic and geography. He grew in intelligence, and in size turning from a boy into a teen right before my eyes. While he was turning from boy to teen, I too was continuing my journey of growth. Since Percy had helped me return to the home I loved all my childhood.. I did feel beholden to him in some ways.. as if I owed him something. I did support his cause because I believe in it.. (I can’t say as much for the Chouannerie my husband was so fanatical over… they make me nervous…) and we became friends – and I made other friends and developed other interests as well. Some of them shockingly free… and I enjoyed it.. but it wasn’t to last forever.
By 1820, things had quieted down considerably, once more. It was safe for Jean-Claude to join us at the estate and come out of hiding. At first, I was anxious to have him home. We’d become fond of each other, and I’d missed him. However, I should have known that the good times between us were to be short lived. I should have understood that I had changed irrevocably. In the four years Jean-Claude had been absent, Henri and I had bonded more closely, and I had become secure in the intelligence of standing on my own two feet. I was a confidant woman now, strong, knowledgeable – no longer that little girl he could control and be the leader of. I don’t think he ever meant it in a bad way, but I realized then that he’d always viewed me and treated me as a child, I’d just been too young to understand it until then. The tension reached a breaking point when I learned he had had a mistress during the time he had been in Britain. I’m not sure, truthfully, that our relationship ever really recovered from that. He could not understand, and did not like the changes in me, and I resented how he still attempted to treat me as the fourteen year old child he’d married. He left no room for me to grow as a human being and seemed utterly perplexed that I should –need- to. I sought comfort in my friendships with others.
It was a further nine years before I would find myself an unexpected widow. I cannot say I was glad of it, for I missed Jean-Claude’s companionship, even if we had never had a very good marriage. I tried to replace him by holding on tighter to Henri, but grown and anxious to live his own life, he was too busy chasing around in the woods with Nathaniel and Helene. Ugh. He could do better than either.. but try convincing him of anything. He’s as stubborn as Jean-Claude about some things. And, truthfully, part of me knows better than to try. I don’t want him to find himself in a relationship the way I did… I want it to be better for him. So, I try to keep my opinion out of things. Perhaps he needs to find his own way to some things. He confounds me. I do not understand how my son, my precious son, could fling all the ideals I ever taught him to the wind and support a cause which will, ultimately, destroy him once they understand that he has money too. Or perhaps they won’t… I don’t really know. I just don’t understand why he wants to be part of a revolutionary movement with peasants who despised the aristocracy – of which he is undeniably a part… He frustrates me.. and yet I still love him so deeply.
Then there is myself… The changes which have been wrought in me since Jean-Claude’s death are confusing to me. I feel as if I’m starting to change, beginning to see myself and everyone around me in a different light.. a more enlightened one. I feel free for the first time in years. Free to explore, learn, grow as a human being. I imagine these changes are how it must have felt to live in the renaissance… but this is –my- renaissance. Nothing and no one can take it from me. I will learn to swim – maybe even nude, I will ride horses without sidesaddles, and dance and laugh and cry freely. Maybe I will even be in love. I am going to become the person I was always meant to be. I am going to discover who and what that is… no matter what it takes. I will keep my estate and its people safe from the government – including my husband’s Chouannerie friends – even if that means keeping double books from them and my own son to keep him from tapping the funds for use in activities which I do not agree with. I –will- fight.
~*~
The woman’s eyes were still fixed on the window as her voice finally quieted and then dropped off completely, though she still looked lost in a world of her own.
Your Alias: Beck
Age: 24
Gender: Girl
Time Zone:EST/CST
