Champagne Widows

Veuve Clicquot,

Grande Dame of Champagne

A Novel

Rebecca Rosenberg

LION HEART PUBLISHING

Champagne Widows is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either

products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2021 by Rebecca Fisher Rosenberg

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the publisher’s express permission.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021913815

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7329699-1-9

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7329699-2-6

Cover Design by Lynn Andreozzi

Image Lord Price Collection 1915

Printed in the United States of America

A love of champagne inspired me to write Champagne Widows and dedicate it to the sisters who poured their hearts and souls into Breathless Wines. A toast to you, Sharon, Rebecca, and Cynthia. You inspire women to flourish just as Barbe-Nicole Clicquot did!

“Champagne. In victory one deserves it, in defeat one needs it.” –Napoleon Bonaparte

1

Le Nez

The Nose

Reims, Champagne, France 1797. Grand-mère sways over the edge of the stone stairs into the cavern, and I step between her and eternity, dizzy from the bloody tang of her head bandage.

“Let’s go back. We’ll come another time.” I try to turn her around, so we don’t tumble into the dark crayère, but she holds firm.

“There won’t be another time if I know your maman and her heretic doctor.”

They drilled into Grand-mère’s skull again for a disease they call hysteria. The hole was supposed to let out evil spirits, but the gruesome treatment hasn’t stopped her sniffing every book, pillow, and candle, trying to capture its essence, agitated that her sense of smell has disappeared.

“This is how you know you are alive, Barbe-Nicole.” She taps her nose frantically. “The aromas of brioche fresh from the oven, lavender water ironed into your clothes, your father’s pipe smoke. You must understand. Time is running out.” Her fingernails claw my arm, the whale oil lamp sputtering and smoking in her other hand.

“Let me lead.” Taking the stinking lantern, I let her grip my shoulders from behind. Grand-mère shrunk so much, she’s my height of five feet, though she’s a step above. For as long as I remember, she has tried to justify my worst fault. My cursed proboscis, as Maman calls my over-sensitive nose, has been a battle between us since I was little. I remember walking with her through town, avoiding chamber pots dumped from windows, horse excrement paving the roads, and factories belching black gases. Excruciating pain surged to my nose, making my eyes water and sending me into sneezing fits. Maman left me standing alone on the street.

Maman complains my cursed sense of smell makes me too particular, too demanding, and frankly, too peculiar. Decidedly troublesome traits for a daughter she’s tried to marry off since I was sixteen. But why must the suitors she picks have to smell so bad?

Grand-mère squeezes my shoulder. “It is not your fault you are the way you are, Barbe-Nicole; it’s a gift.” She chirped this over and over this afternoon until Maman threatened to have the doctor drill her skull again.

The lantern casts ghoulish shadows on the chalk walls as my bare toes reach for the next stair and the next. I’ll have hell to pay if we’re caught down here. Part of me came tonight to humor Grand-mère, but part of me craves more time with her. I’ve witnessed her tremors, her shuffling feet, her crazy obsessions, which now seem to focus on my nose.

As we descend, the dank air chills my legs; feathery chalk dust makes my feet slip on the steps. The Romans excavated these chalk quarries a thousand years ago, creating a sprawling web of crayères under our ancient town of Reims. What exactly does Grand-mère have in mind bringing me down here? The lantern throws a halo on grape clusters laying on the rough-hewn table.

Ah, she wants to play her sniffing game.

“How did you set this up?” My toes recoil from cold puddles of spring water.

“I’m not dead yet,” she croaks. Taking off her fringed bed shawl, she ties it like a blindfold over my eyes. “Don’t peek.”

“Wouldn’t dare.” I lift a corner of the shawl, and she raps my fingers like the nuns at St.-Pierre-Les-Dames where Maman sent me to school before the Revolution shut down convents.

“Quit lollygagging and breathe deep.” Grand-mère’s knobby fingertips knead below my cheekbones, opening my nasal passages to the mineral smell of chalk, pristine groundwater, oak barrels, the purple aroma of fermenting wine.

But these profound smells can’t stop me fretting about Maman’s determination to marry me off before the year is out. I told her I’d only marry a suitor that smells like springtime. “Men do not smell like that,” she scolded.

But men do. Or one did, anyway. He was conscribed to war several years ago, so he probably doesn’t smell like springtime anymore. His green-sprout smell ruined me for anyone else.

Grand-mère places a bunch of grapes in my hands and brings it to my nose. “What comes to you?”

“The grapes smell like ripening pears and a hint of Hawthorne berry.”

She chortles and replaces the grapes with another bunch. “What about these?”

Drawing the aroma into the top of my palate, I picture gypsies around a campfire, smoky, deep, and complex. “Grilled toast and coffee.”

Her next handful of grapes are sticky and soft, the aroma so robust and delicious, my tongue longs for a taste. “Smells like chocolate-covered cherries.”

Grand-mère wheezes with a rasp and rattle that scares me.

I yank off the blindfold. “Grand-mère?”

“You’re ready.” She slides me a wooden box carved with vineyards and women carrying baskets of grapes on their heads. “Open it.”

Inside lays a gold tastevin, a wine-tasting cup on a long, heavy neck chain.

“Your great Grand-père, Nicolas Ruinart, used this cup to taste wine with the monks at Hautvillers Abbey. Just by smelling the grapes, he could tell you the slope of the hill on which they grew, the exposure to the sun, the minerals in the soil.” She closes her papery eyelids and inhales. “He’d lift his nose to the west and smell the ocean.” She turns. “He’d smell German bratwurst to the northeast.” Her head swivels. “To the south, the perfume of lavender fields in Provence.” Her snaggletooth protrudes when she smiles. “Your great Grand-père was Le Nez.” The Nose. “He passed down his precious gift to you.”

Here she goes again with her crazy notions. “Maman says Le Nez is a curse.”

Grand-mère clucks her tongue. “Your maman didn’t inherit Le Nez, so she doesn’t understand it. It’s a rare and precious gift, smelling the hidden essence of things. I took it for granted, and now it’s gone.” Her wrinkled hand picks up the gold tastevin and christens my nose.

A prickling clusters in my sinuses like a powerful sneeze that won’t release. I wish there were truth to Grand-mère’s ramblings; it would explain so much about my finicky nature.

“You are Le Nez, Barbe-Nicole.” She lifts the chain over my head, and the cup nestles above my breasts. “You must carry on Grand-père Ruinart’s gift.”

“Why haven’t you told me about this until now?”

“Your maman forbid it.” She wags her finger. “But I’m taking matters into my own hands before I die.”

I feel an etching on the bottom of the cup. “Is this an anchor?”

“Ah, yes, the anchor. The anchor symbolizes clarity and courage during chaos and confusion.”

“Chaos and confusion?” Now I know the story is a delusion. “Aren’t those your cat’s names?”

“I have cats?” She stares vacantly into the beyond, and her eerie, foreboding voice echoes through the chamber. “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

Holding her bandaged head, Grand-mère keens incoherently. The lantern casts her monstrous shadow on the crayère wall; her tasting game has become a nightmare.

“Let’s get you back to your room.” I try to walk her to the stairs, but her legs give out. Lifting her bird-like body in my arms, I carry her as she carried me as a child, trying not to topple over into the crayère.

“Promise you’ll carry on Le Nez,” she says, exhaling sentir le sapin, the smell of fir coffins.

My dear Grand-mère is dying in my arms. Now I know Le Nez is a curse.

“Promise me.” Her eyelids flutter and close.

“I won’t let you down, Grand-mère,” I whisper. She feels suddenly light in my arms, but the gold tastevin feels heavy, so very heavy, around my neck.

***

FIRST COALITION WAR

1792–1797. After French revolutionaries execute King Louis XVI by guillotine,

they behead seventeen thousand fellow Frenchmen who disagree with their new government,

the French First Republic. The monarchies of Austria, Great Britain, Spain,

and Prussia forge a coalition to defeat the renegade French revolutionaries.

After five years of carnage, twenty-eight-year-old French General Napoleon Bonaparte brings the European coalition to their knees at the Battle of Lodi.

“This victory proves I’m superior to other generals,” Napoleon writes.

“I am destined to achieve great things.”

***

“Adieu, woman, torment, joy, hope, and soul of my life, whom I love, whom I fear,

who inspires in me emotions as volcanic as thunder.”

–Napoleon’s letter to Josephine

1797. Lodi, Italy. General Napoleon Bonaparte blows on the ink as he rereads the last line of his letter, bile rising in his throat. Since his arrival at his command camp in Italy, he’s written Josephine every day but hasn’t received a letter from her, which only enflames his longing. He aches for her scent, the tropical fragrance of her native island of Martinique. Exotic and rare, her sensual aroma sends his heart racing like no other dalliance. In his last letter, he begged her not to bathe until he returned so he could breathe her in when she wrapped her tanned legs around his, teasing him with the warmth of her black forest. Josephine has many charms, but it is her smell he cannot resist. Her smell holds him prisoner.

Yet, he was forced from his honeymoon bed a mere two days after their wedding. Le Directoire, the committee that rules France after King Louis XVI was guillotined, ordered Napoleon to Italy to command a belittling side battle, instead of leading the primary war in Germany. Apparently, they didn’t think a twenty-eight-year-old general had enough experience. Now, Napoleon must prove them wrong, but without Josephine’s advice in his ear, his thoughts run amuck like mice in the field.

Josephine’s influential social and political ties in Paris are rumored to spring from the beds of the newly powerful. He doesn’t care. Josephine is his now, and she’s made it her business to help him rise to prominence. How she managed it was her affair, with her mysterious half-smile that persuades men to do her bidding. But why doesn’t she write? Without Josephine, his battle plans look like the scribbles of a child. If he waits any longer, there will be no battle to be waged and won; the enemy has started retreating. His armée will be a joke with Napoleon as the punch line.

A tall reedy man slips into his tent and stands before him if, indeed, he can be called a man. His macabre mutilations are hard to stomach. The wretched fellow looks as if a cannonball exploded on him, his skin a molten mass of crimson and scarlet, clashing with his red coat embroidered with an inverted pentacle, a uniform that belongs neither to the blue coats of the National Guard or white coats of the old Royal Guard. But it is this Red Man’s stench he can’t abide. Putrid and decaying like a decomposed cow carcass crawling with maggots.

Napoleon gags but swallows it. Refusing to show weakness, he juts his chin and glares at this Red Man who’s taller by head and shoulders. “Who gave you permission to disturb me?”

“I’m your new coachman,” the Red Man says, with a graveled voice.

“I need no coachman.” Napoleon flicks his hand toward the tent flap. “Leave me to think.”

“Thinking will relegate your career to a footnote about a general who thought so long his enemy escaped.”

An arrow of pain pierces his temple. “Get out, or I’ll call the guards.”

“You’re squandering your gift.”

“You know nothing of me.” The coachman’s impertinence unnerves him. “Who are you?”

“Someone who knows you better than you know yourself.” The Red Man’s sneer bares oddly white teeth. “You possess a faultless memory, razor intellect, resolute purpose, skillful leadership, a gift for oratory.” He kicks at the crumpled battle plans discarded on the ground. “But you’re allowing yourself to be riddled with chaos and confusion.”

The truth sinks deep as viper fangs. Chaos and confusion, the ruin of any great general. “You have one minute to tell me why I shouldn’t throw you in the pit with the rats.”

The Red Man’s jaundiced eyes narrow until only the void of his pupils show. Without a word spoken between them, the chaos and confusion in Napoleon’s mind part like the Red Sea, revealing a strategy so clear, he recognizes it as his own true genius.

When morning comes, Napoleon orders the cavalry to circle around and attack the enemy from the rear while he leads the assault of artillery and cannons from the front. The seductive odor of gunpowder, cannonballs, bullets, and blood titillate him, his body convulsing in ecstatic pain and pleasure, far surpassing anything he experienced with a woman. Even Josephine.

The Red Man emerges from the smoke. “Now that you understand your gift, you cannot waste it. To whom much is given, much is expected.”

These words ignite a new ambition in him. Napoleon writes le Directoire, “I no longer consider myself a mere general, but a man called upon to decide the fate of peoples.” Without le Directoire’s approval, he marches his exhausted armée forty-five hundred miles to conquer Egypt.

The Red Man drives his coach.

***

2

Elle ira loin si les cochons ne la mangent pas.

She’ll go far if the pigs do not eat her.

Reims, France 1798. When Melvin Souillon comes to call on me, it is not long before he asks to see the vineyards I inherited from Grand-mère, God rest her soul. He smells sweet like fresh-shucked corn, the scent of long summer days, sunshine burnishing my cheeks, warm soil under my bare feet. Promising.

Melvin is impressed with my land and, upon our return, abruptly asks my father for my hand in marriage.

“Why don’t you ask me, Monsieur?” I say. “I’m right here.”

Papa chokes on his pipe, coughing up great clouds of smoke.

Maman blurts a laugh. “Ah, Barbe-Nicole, you do have a wicked sense of humor.” Her fingernails spear my arm. “Come, dear. Let the men talk.” She pulls me down the hallway to her salon, closing the door behind us. “You’d be lucky to marry Monsieur Souillon. The Souillons are the largest landowners in the Champagne region.”

Her gardenia perfume makes me sniff and cough, my head throbbing. I cover my nostrils with my forefinger.

“Stop that.” She swats my hand down. “There are so few men left who aren’t conscribed to war.” Her voice quivers like a violin string about to snap. “Please, Barbe-Nicole, you must try to hide your curse until you’re betrothed.”

She stares into her Cheval mirror, smoothing wrinkles on her forehead with her pinkie. Such a pitiful sight, I almost tell her the truth. I’ve been using Le Nez to reject her suitors, holding out for my childhood sweetheart. He has to come back from war someday; his parents live on the street behind us. But Maman never liked my Tadpole, as I called him. She thought him odd.

“Grand-mère is to blame for your stubbornness,” Maman says. “Don’t you know she made up the curse of Le Nez to justify your persnickety personality?”

“Le Nez is not a curse. It’s a gift passed down from great Grand-père Ruinart. She said so herself.” But deep down, I know Maman is right. Le Nez was Grand-mère’s rose-colored fairytale for her favorite grandchild, picky and particular as I was.

“The rantings of a crazy woman. Come here; your corset is loose.” Maman spins me around and unties the laces. “You’ve turned down three proposals of marriage since you’ve turned twenty-one and three before that. When the blush of youth is off your cheek, no one will want you. You’ll die a spinster.” She leans back to get leverage on the laces.

“At least I have Grand-mère’s vineyards to support me.” She took care of me even when she passed.

“Surely you know the law grants a father control over a daughter’s inheritance until her husband takes possession.” She pulls the laces tight as a tourniquet.

“No, Maman. That cannot be true.”

“Oui, oui, but it is.” Maman double knots my corset laces before she ties the bow, binding me in as tight as my fate.

“So I must marry or lose my inheritance?” My voice squeaks an octave higher.

“Men control finances, Barbe-Nicole.” She sighs. “Only a widow can possess something of her own. So, you better make up your mind to marry, or Papa may sell Grand-mère’s vineyards to meet his company payroll.”

I huff. “Papa would not dare.”

“He may have no choice. Taxes are exceedingly high with the wars to finance.”

“But what if I don’t love Monsuier Souillon?” I sniff to recall Tadpole’s spring scent, but the memory eludes me. I sniff again.

“Don’t get emotional,” Maman says. “It doesn’t become you. Love comes after marriage, remember that.”

Down the hallway, my loving Papa accepts Melvin’s proposal with a caveat that I must agree to the marriage. At least, the boule ball is back in my court, and I plan to take full advantage.

***

A week later, Maman and I travel in the pouring rain to the Souillon’s farm on the west side of the Champagne.

Melvin holds an umbrella as I lift my velvet skirt to climb the stairs, flashing my new hand-painted boots with hourglass heels and jeweled buckle. When Melvin sees them, the tips of his ears turn pink. I guess Maman was right when she told me, “Emphasize your dainty feet, and men will assume the rest of you is dainty.” She meant I’m plump. She’s bought me dozens of eye-catching shoes that look fetching on my feet. The nicest thing she’s done for me is an insult.

“You will love the view of the Marne River in the back,” Melvin’s father tells Maman as he opens the front door of the new home he built for his son and new wife.

Try as I might to identify the earthy scent of my prospective new home, the drizzle dampens my Le Nez.

“Isn’t it lovely, Barbe-Nicole?” Maman gushes at the three-story Mansard with wraparound porches. “Can you imagine watching sunsets here?”

“Spectacular sunsets.” Melvin’s father gazes at Maman, who took hours at her vanity this morning as her maid coiffured her hair in a birdnest complete with pearl eggs, then powdered her complexion with Mask of Youth, rouged circles on her cheeks, and painted pointed lips.

I followed my usual routine, washing my face with lavender soap, with no interest in cosmetics. My only vanity is my feet.

When Monsieur Souillon shows us the front room, Maman gasps and holds her green ruffled décolleté as if it’s her marriage she is negotiating.

The Mansard style appeals to my sense of order, a point for Melvin. The paned windows showcase the rolling hills and meandering Marne River. Another point. I can imagine a lovely life here (yet another point) if it wasn’t for Melvin, whose fresh-shucked corn smell has fermented in the rain.

“I need some fresh air.” Pushing open the back door, I step onto the porch and draw a deep breath. But the foul smell has come from outside, burning my lungs and stinging my eyes. Clenching them closed, I try not to inhale. But now, I hear the grotesque smell: grunting, groveling, oinking, sniveling, rooting. Hundreds, no, thousands of filthy pigs slush around in a gruel of pig manure, mud, and corn. Sweet corn.

“Watch this.” Melvin cups his hand to his mouth and bellows an ungodly sound. “Sooie! Soooooie!” Scooping up corn from the feeding trough, he throws it at our feet, scooping and throwing until the corn covers the porch and my new boots.

Pigs scramble up the hill, slipping and sliding, digging their cloven hooves into the mud.

Melvin pours corn in my hands. “We’ll feed the beautiful babies.”

I hear: “We’ll make beautiful babies.” Letting the corn drop through my fingers, I’m aghast at the thought of birthing his snout-nosed litter.

Pigs scramble onto the porch, slurping up the feed around my boots. They snuff and nip at my ankles, snapping and sucking at my stockings, tearing them off my calves.

“No, no. Shoo.” I bat them away with my handbag, but more pigs climb on top of them, imprinting their hooves on my velvet dress. Pushing off the frenzied pigs, I jump off the porch, sinking into the mud and slop.

Maman and Melvin’s father come out to see the commotion.

“Stand still, and they’ll stop,” Melvin says. “They’re just friendly.”

“I don’t want to be friends with your pigs.” Escaping through the mud, I sacrifice my new boots. A sow and her piglets follow me.

A big puddle looms in front of the carriage. Making a leap for it, I fly through the air, landing squarely in the mudpuddle, which is not a puddle at all, but manure and corn soup. My coveted boots are covered with pig dung.

The three of them catch up to me.

“Barbe-Nicole, let me help you,” Melvin pleads.

“There is no helping me, Monsieur,” I say, stepping into the carriage with my disgusting boots. “I am cursed with Le Nez.”

“Is that a disease?” He backs off.

Maman shoots her finger at me in warning.

“Yes, Le Nez is fatal, I’m afraid…and contagious,” I say. “I won’t live long enough to marry you.” I feel my forehead. “We must go, Maman. I feel a terrible spell coming on.”

***

3

En faire tout un fromage.

To make a whole cheese of it.

On the ride home, a steady trickle of icy water leaks from the corner of the carriage and drips onto my caked boot, exposing the flowers painted on them. The stench of manure mixed with Maman’s perfume makes my stomach gurgle. Then, closing off my nose, I stick my putrid foot into Maman’s sight. Let her see what the muck has done to her precious gift.

“You won’t get away with this.” Maman carries on about my rudeness, my audacity, my lack of humility. Her voice fades into the axles grinding and the sucking sound of horses’ hooves slogging through the mud. The rain blurs the horizon between the dull sky and fallow fields, stubbled with gray grass.

“I won’t have my land turned into a pig farm,” I tell her.

She shakes her nested chignon. “Not your decision, Barbe-Nicole. As I explained, your land is yours in name only. Ownership transfers from your father to your husband.”

“It is in your power to free yourselves,” I quote. “You have only to want to.”

“Olympe Gouges,” Maman says, and I’m shocked. She does not abide by feminism. “You want to end up like her? Olympe was guillotined.” She picks at the paper star pasted on her cheek to hide the sore, resulting from the Mask of Youth which seems to eat the pigment from her skin, leaving it raw and oozing.

“Better dead than married to a pig farmer,” I say.

She clamps her emerald fingernails on my lips. “You ungrateful wench. Have you no respect for what Melvin’s father did to protect us during the Reign of Terror? You pay him back by shooting off your mouth like a musket?”

I rub out the indentations, annoyed she has a point. Souillon defended Papa when revolutionaries wanted to behead him for being a Royalist. After all, Papa had entertained Louis XVI for his coronation. But Souillon advised Papa to join the Jacobins, the most radical of revolutionaries, and that political maneuver saved Papa’s wool mill and town councilman position.

“So, we owe Monsieur Souillon a debt of gratitude, and I am the payoff?”

“Why do you have to be so…so…?” Maman sputters, her face reddening.

“What, Maman? Impossible? Brash? Odd? Outspoken?” I goad her. Now, I’m the cruel one. I feel bad I have this effect on her, but we’ve always been oil and water. My maman, Jeanne-Clementine Huart-Le-Tertre Ponsardin, is all things I am not. Tall and willowy, she dresses only in emerald to match her eyes, never touches sugar in her tea, always wears a hat to protect her porcelain skin. She demands her lady’s maid change her hairstyle daily. Today a nest of pearl eggs, tomorrow a French pleat imprisoned in netting, or a pyramid toque of hair. But my favorite is when she adorns her head with vulture feathers like a pre-historic bird. And to amplify the effect, Maman duplicates her hairstyles on her namesake, my little sister Clementine, a miniature of Jeanne-Clementine with identical emerald eyes and flaxen hair.

Our carriage pulls off Rue Ceres into Hotel Ponsardin as Papa named our grand manor house he built for Louis XVI’s coronation. Spears of cypress line the courtyard. Rainwater rolls off the slate roof and down the façade of Courville stone. My family must be in the back because all thirty-six windows are dark. Only the oval attic window shines bright, silhouetting a small figure. Lizzette, with her wayward eye, our nursemaid, seamstress, confidant, always singing Trobairitz songs from when she entertained the royal courts. Just the thought of her lightens my despair. Maybe she’ll have an idea how I can deter Maman’s relentless march toward my matrimony, as fatal as the guillotine.

Matrimony: where my most important decision will be what the cook prepares for dinner, my creativity limited to crocheting lace doilies, the highlight of my week taking tea with the neighbor lady and her spoiled children. What happened to the freedom I had as a child? When Tadpole and I followed our noses (or, rather, my nose) to adventure, our parents glad we had each other to keep us occupied.

Inside the imposing doors of Hotel Ponsardin, our new butler with a pencil mustache takes our cloaks, his nose twitching as he takes mine. My siblings’ voices echo from the upper reaches, who cheated who at cribbage.

Lizzette steps down the wrought iron staircase, tucking a strawberry curl under her mop cap. Then, seeing my soiled dress, she pulls down her lower eyelid in disapproval. “What happened to you, Mademoiselle?”

I pirouette to show off my manure patina just to get a rise from her. Lizzette abhors anything dirty or unkempt on us children. She maintains us as she did the royal children of Versailles court before she fled the Reign of Terror.

She takes my hand. “A lavender bath will kill the stench.”

“How wonderful,” I say, ready to escape upstairs.

“You can’t protect her this time, Lizzette.” Maman takes a pinch of my sleeve. “I want Nicolas to see what she’s done.”

“Can’t I wash up first?” The pig-offal odor turns my stomach.

Maman marches me back to the library as I frantically figure out a way to avoid this betrothal and keep my inheritance.

***

Papa is reading his L' Tribun du Peuple. “Stunning victory in the Battle of Lodi.” He folds the newspaper. “General Bonaparte is a hero.”

I bend to kiss his cheek, but he jerks back, coughing from my wretched smell.

“Barbe-Nicole refused Melvin Souillon’s proposal of marriage.” Maman yanks off green kid gloves and tosses them on the inlaid table. “Claimed she had a fatal disease of Le Nez.”

Papa laughs and wags his finger. “Naughty child.”

“This is your fault for indulging her, Nicolas.”

By the hearth, my fingertips graze Grand-mère’s lace loom I used to hold for her. She would weave her spindles through the lace and tell tales of enchanted black cats called matagots.

Maman’s painted eyebrows pinch together. “Monsieur Souillon claims he’ll keep the dowry if Barbe-Nicole won’t go through with the wedding.” She sits next to Papa on the divan, spreading her skirts around delicate ankles.

“Maybe my darling sister Clementine wants to marry a pig farmer,” I say. A sudden downdraft makes a chortling sound in the chimney, sparks flying. “You little stinker!” Grand-mère says or would have said if she was alive.

Papa pours Saint-Germaine liqueur into cut crystal glasses and serves Maman. “I’ll smooth things over with Monsieur Souillon.” He offers me an amber-filled glass, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Barbe-Nicole, you must try your best to cooperate with your Maman.”

“Did I mention it’s a pig farm?” I stick my nose over the elderflower liqueur, trying to diffuse the stench.

“The Souillons are nothing to sniff at, mon chou.” His nostrils flare. “They’re the wealthiest farmers in the Champagne and my biggest supporters.” His gaze darts across the mahogany bookcases as if they will disappear before his eyes. Our wool business has been terrible since the revolution. He worries he’ll lose his magnificent Hotel Ponsardin and sees Souillon as the answer.

“But why do I have to marry?” Maybe there’s another way I can help. “Let me take over the bookkeeping at Ponsardin Woolens and collect from our debtors.”

“That’s your brother’s job.” He pats my shoulder.

“But Jean-Baptiste doesn’t show up for work, and I will.”

Papa peers at me over his glasses. “You will be married, Barbe-Nicole.”

“You can’t expect me to live with pigs, Papa. I am Le Nez.”

“Stop with Le Nez. Stop it. Stop it.” Maman’s head shakes so hard her hair nest unravels, pearl eggs cracking on the stone floor. “You are wicked to bring up my mother’s crazy notions.” She gathers up pearls. “Oh, Nicolas, no one will want her when the Souillons spread the news. Every young man will avoid her at Le Bal des Débutantes.”

“Then I won’t go to the ball,” I say, thrilled to avoid the awkward advances of suitors, mothers keeping score from the sidelines.

Maman huffs. “Maybe I’ll just ship you off to your aunt in Paris. How would you like that?”

“Hallelujah!” I blurt out the holy word, treasonous since the revolution made religion illegal.

Maman stiffens and holds her finger to her lips. “Quiet. The servants will hear you.”

Jumping out of my chair, I sing with all the volume my lungs afford me. “Ha—lle-lu-jah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

Papa snorts, then blurts out a laugh, and I sing louder.

Maman brushes her hands together. “I wash my hands of you, Barbe-Nicole. She’s your project now, Nicolas.”

“Then I don’t have to marry Melvin Souillon?” I run and kiss her cheek. “Merci, merci, Maman. You’ve made me so happy.” Running out of the library, I pass a maid carrying a tray of petit-fours and take one, singing, “Ha—lle-lu-jah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

“Not so fast, mon chou,” Papa calls after me. “This doesn’t mean you don’t have to marry.”

With that, my ebullience deflates, and I stuff the morsel into my mouth.

***

My dear maid, Lizzette, does her best to console me in my boudoir, disposing of my soiled dress. Then, she helps me into a lavender bath, the one scent that soothes my agitated nose.

“Why are my parents forcing me to marry?” I say, bending over to inhale the soothing lavender.

“They want what’s best for you.” She scrubs my back with a sea sponge.

“If they wanted what’s best for me, they’d let me choose.”

She washes under my arms, tickling. “Still pining over your neighbor boy, are you?”

A shiver runs through my bare body. Lizzette fetches the kettle from the wood stove and pours hot water into the cooling tub.

“Je ne suis pas née de la dernière pluie.” I was not born in the last rain. “That would be foolish. He’s not coming back.”

Lizzette holds up a towel for me. “Don’t worry, Barbe-Nicole. You’ll find the right man.”

“But I’m not looking.” Standing up from the bath, my wet and shining body reflects in the Cheval mirror, not lithe like Clementine and Maman, but plump and curvy. Soap bubbles slide down my pink skin. My red-gold hair twists into a chignon with tendrils around pink cheeks, my gray eyes shimmer by the candlelight. So this is how my betrothed will see me on our wedding night. A sight saved for someone special, certainly not a pig farmer.

***

4

Le destin d'un têtard est de s'éloigner.

The destiny of a tadpole is to hop away.

On one of his whims, Jean-Baptiste visits cousins in Paris, leaving his bookkeeping duties untouched. I convince Papa to let me prepare the payroll for our one-thousand employees at Ponsardin Woolens. Sitting at the large roll-top desk, leather ledgers under my fingers, the acrid smell of ink infuses me with a sense of purpose.

But soon, I discover why Papa’s hair has turned white. Our payroll exceeds our sales.

I see we lost our large royal and nobleman contracts after the revolution. Papa has been paying salaries from our personal account ever since. Twenty years of financial turmoil in France (First, King Louis XVII drained the treasury to pay for Marie Antoinette’s extravagances, followed by the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror) has stretched Ponsardin Woolens finances to the breaking point.

My refusal to marry only adds to Papa’s burden. An anvil of guilt presses on my shoulders.

After completing the payroll, I ask Papa to ride along when he picks up wool from our sheep farm. I need to talk to him about our dwindling resources. He pulls on the Phrygian Liberty cap he wears in solidarity with the working class and helps me climb up to the wagon bench.

In the countryside, the deep crease between his eyes softens as we take in rich aromas of loam and sprouting grass, bright green from winter rains. That green smell sets off a sharp longing under my ribs, and I plug my nose against the emotion. When will I admit that my old friend, Tadpole, is not coming back?

I focus instead on the broad-winged Harriers gliding like angels under cumulus clouds. A peasant woman plants potatoes in the rich earth on a small patch of land, and above her, a girl shepherds a flock of sheep.

“Peasant women are allowed to work,” I say. “Why are upper-class women forced to marry and have babies?”

Papa’s mouth twists. “Be grateful you don’t have to work, mon chou.”

“I saw the accounts, Papa. How long can Ponsardin Woolens survive?”

He glances sideways. “I always find a way.” The wagon wheels judder on the rutted road, and we ride in silence for a while. When he speaks again, his voice is wistful. “Your maman and I had big dreams for you, our firstborn. So we sent you to the royal convent school where your schoolmates were nobles. But when the king was guillotined, I knew France would never be the same.”

He swallows hard, looking as stoic as that night during the revolution when he went to lock the gates of Hotel Ponsardin against a torch-bearing crowd. I ran to help him, but someone threw a rock, which set off an avalanche of rocks thrown at us. One jagged stone hit my mouth, blood gushing from my lip. Papa shielded me from their pelting until I ran inside. Blood stained my brocade dress, and my mouth throbbed. But nothing compared to the bloody gashes and purple welts on Papa. He kept the gate locked while revolutionaries beheaded our royals and noblemen, Catholic priests and nuns, and wealthy tradesmen like us.

I owe Papa my life. Time to stop acting like a spoiled child and support him for a change.

When we reach the shearing barn, Papa helps me down from the wagon, quite a jump for my short legs. As a child, shearing sheep scared me, pungent odors of frightened ewes and wet wool. But I grew to love the lilting melody of a wooden flute accompanied by the rhythmic clipping of shears and gentle bleating. The earthy, musty smell took on a new meaning for me. These animals have sustained our family for generations.

A young boy rolls a black-faced ewe on its back, gripping her firmly between his knees, and securing her front hooves with one hand. He holds the sheep steady as a woman presses shears against its body, cutting off the wool in one continuous piece, all while singing a French lullaby. The fleece lays on the barn floor, a keepsake box of the ewe’s life: feathers, snails, twigs and rocks, blue robin’s eggs.

A tiny lad wearing a Liberty cap leads the naked sheep through a narrow gate to the warming stable.

“These boys look awfully young to work,” I say, coughing with the dust and fuzz.

“Their fathers have been conscripted to fight the war. They need the money.”

We walk to the processing warehouse; belching vats of boiling bleach sting our eyes with caustic steam. A woman stirs a hammered copper kettle with a wooden paddle, her hands blistered and pocked, her eyes rimmed red.

“We should provide gloves and masks to protect against the chlorine,” I say.

He huffs and nods. “Too expensive. Our prices already can’t compete with Britain’s.”

A voice interrupts from behind. “We can compete if we combine forces,” says Philippe Clicquot, our neighbor and shrewdest competitor in the wool business. His Liberty cap and sans-culotte trousers match Papa’s: revolutionary uniforms of equality and brotherhood. Their right fists knock their chests.

“I have a proposal to discuss, Nicolas,” Philippe says.

Behind him stands a shaggy long-haired young man with tufts growing randomly from his jaw. A thin, scraggly mustache emphasizes his chapped lips. A fine linen coat hangs on his lanky frame, sleeves skimming bony knuckles, fingernails gnashed to the quick. His eyes blink, oddly multi-colored like my kaleidoscope, green flecked with aqua and ringed in amber.

Warmth radiates through my body as I run and throw my arms around him. “Tadpole, you’re back!” His verdant scent is more complex than I remember, the ephemeral aroma of grapevines blooming as we chased each other through the vineyards.

He stiffens under my embrace, and I back away. Doesn’t he remember us catching tadpoles and raising them until they jumped to freedom? I dubbed him Tadpole from then on. Perhaps he thinks it’s childish.

Philippe squints at his son. “François is just back from the armée.”

Tadpole doesn’t look up.

“Nice to see you again, François,” I say.

My inquiries to his parents while he was gone, were always met with a change of subject. Maman scolded me to stop asking, but how could I forget a friend who read me Voltaire and Rousseau, helped me climb the gnarled Tortosa trees, snuck out to count the stars until I fell asleep in the crook of his arm?

Papa breaks the silence. “I heard you were fighting in Italy with General Bonaparte.”

A beetle scuttles over François’s boot.

“The armée wanted to send him on to Egypt with Napoleon,” Philippe says. “But I managed to get him a desk job with the military. He’s an expert in logistics.”

“Logics?” I ask. “Are you a philosopher?”

François blurts a hysteric hoot and giggles until a tear streams down his cheek.

“That’s enough, François.” Philippe squeezes his son’s shoulder.

My face grows hot. “What is it? What did I say?”

“Logistics is figuring out what supplies are needed in the war and getting them to where they need to be,” Papa says, tugging his sideburn.

“Moving cargo, weapons, or supplies from one battlefield to another,” Phillipe says. “A very important job. Very important, indeed.”

François mumbles something at the ground.

“I beg your pardon?” I ask. Definitely not the reunion I imagined.

“I am not the military hero Philippe suggests.”

His confession touches me. He never liked to brag and always called his father by his first name.

“Nicolas, do you have somewhere we can talk?” Philippe follows Papa to his office.

“Maybe we could sort some fleece, like the old days,” I ask François, hoping to revive something we shared.

He strokes his scraggly chin. “If you want to.”

Surprised but pleased, I take him down to the sorting floor, billowing with newly shorn fleece. Then, jumping into the task, we spread the wool with our hands, picking out pebbles and thistles, the air thick with fuzz.

As my hands move, memories prickle like pins and needles, pain and pleasure too close to separate. When I was seven, eleven-year-old François grew large adult teeth, white as milk. His breath smelled of wild anise. Later, the sight of sprouting whiskers on his upper lip made my stomach somersault. François taught me chess, rewarding me with acorns each time I remembered that a bishop moves diagonally, but a knight moves in an L.

Picking through the wool for an acorn, I hold it out to him. He blinks and puts the acorn in his pocket. Then, returning to his task, his long fingers weave through the wool as I wish they would comb through my hair.

After an hour of sorting, we lift the last of the clean fleece and hang it on hooks. The backs of my arms and legs burn. Oily fuzz covers our clothing. Laughing at the ridiculous sight, I catch a glimpse of François’s smile before it withers like a moonflower closing before sunrise.

The Sunday before François was conscribed to the Grande Armée our families dined together at their house. Afterward, he and I ran through the grapevine labyrinth between our houses. I was thirteen, no, fourteen, because François was eighteen when he left.

I hid between the grapevines, and when he passed, I reached out and caught him. He took my hand and flattened it on his chest, his heart pounding against his ribs like it would burst.

“Will you wait for me?” His speckled eyes searched my face with intense yearning. Then he lunged and kissed me with lips tasting of licorice. We stayed there in the labyrinth, exploring each other with our mouths and hands until long after sunset.

The next day François reported for duty. His uniform made him look so much older: blue wool coat with red lapels and brass buttons, white collar and cuffs piped in red, a dashing bicorne hat. He couldn’t kiss me, of course, with our parents looking on. But I pressed my hand against his chest, and I thought he knew what I meant.

Months passed without François’s return, then years. Philippe regaled us with glowing stories of his conquests, his rise through the ranks of the armée. His mother cried when I asked for his address. Over the years, Catherine-Françoise took more and more to her bed.

Every night François was gone, I looked at the brightest star, knowing it shined on him, too. Pressing my hand on my heart, I thought of him, hoping he was thinking of me at the same moment.

Now, I’m picking fleece off his coat, dying to ask about those lost years, but our fathers are walking toward us.

Papa strokes his chin. “That’s a daunting task you propose, Phillipe.”

“Perhaps Ponsardin Woolens is not up to the challenge.” He frowns.

“Of course, we are.” Papa shakes his hand. “I owe you, my friend.”

“We’ll iron out details tomorrow.” Philippe nods. “Ready, son?” They walk toward the door, and just like that, Tadpole walks out of my life once again.

Can’t let him go. “How about a chess match tomorrow?” I call after him.

He turns to me, his smile more of a smirk. “You know I always let you win, don’t you?”

“Not tomorrow, you don’t.” I grin back. He remembers.

***

On the wagon trip back, Papa dodges my questions about the business deal Philippe Clicquot proposed.

“What aren’t you telling me, Papa? Ç'est un navet?” Is the deal a turnip?

“More like a perfect peach with a worm in it.” He laughs nervously. “But if I take it, I’ll be able to feed our thousand hungry workers for the next year.” Biting the tip of his tongue.

“What’s the worm, then?” I ask. “You always say we have to take the bad with the good.”

One hand on the reins, he reaches over and tweaks my nose. But his eyes glint with worry.

“What is wrong, Papa?”

He blinks at me, eyes watering, then focuses on the road. “There is a tricky condition to the contract. It’s not worth the sacrifice.”

“You have your employees to think about,” I say. “Surely, the sacrifice is worth it.” As the wagon rounds the hill, the stench of Souillon’s pig farm stings my sinuses. I clamp my nostrils shut.

Papa looks up at Melvin’s new house with a wrap-around porch. “If you lived up there, there’d hardly be any smell at all. The wind carries it away.”

“But I would live with pigs, Papa,” I say. “Is that what you want for me?”

Papa’s chest heaves. “What is it you want, mon chou?”

“What I’ve wanted since Grand-mère gave me this.” I grasp the gold tastevin around my neck. “I want to learn to make wine.”

He snorts. “And you are absolutely sure that would make you happy?”

“Over the moon.” I smile smugly.

“Then, so be it.” Papa cracks the reins, and the horses lurch ahead, nearly jolting me off the bench. But Papa seems anything but satisfied. His jaw clenches and Adam’s apple gulps as if he’s swallowing old partridge.

“I’ll be fine if that’s what you are worried about,” I say. “We have to take the good with the bad, right?”

***

5

Celui qui court après deux lièvres à la fois, n'en attrape aucun.

One who runs after two hares at one time, catches none.

I practice my chess moves all evening, preparing for my match with François. How strange he looked at the shearing barn. Will it be the same between us?

Papa takes me to his meeting at Clicquot Manor. Philippe is talking to a rotund but elegant gentleman wearing the burgundy beret, tapestry vest, and velvet pantaloons in the old style, far more romantic than the peasant clothing of the revolution.

“Welcome, Mademoiselle Ponsardin,” Philippe says. “May I present Monsieur Alexandre Fourneaux, the cellarmaster who makes our Clicquot-Muiron wine?” Muiron is his wife’s maiden name, a tribute that’s always impressed me.

I present my hand, and he crushes his curlicue moustachio against it. “I didn’t realize Clicquot-Muiron didn’t make their own wine.”

“Clicquot-Muiron is a négociant. A wine seller.” Fourneaux flourishes his old-fashioned cape, wafting the aroma of ripe grapes.

“Fourneaux...your name evokes a warm stove or explosive fire,” I say. “Which are you?”

“Which do you prefer, Mademoiselle?”

Papa clears his throat. “We’ve enjoyed your wine, Citoyen Fourneaux.”

Citoyen. Citizen, the title the revolutionaries use to denote equality. No more Duke or Duchess, no Count or Countess. Citizen. It’s even frowned upon to use Mademoiselle, Madame, or Monsieur. In the name of equality, they’ve tossed all Frenchmen up in the air like dice, and we’ve landed with no background, family, or history. Equally uninteresting.

Philippe pushes open the door to his study. “Right this way.”

But Fourneaux’s gaze is lost in my décolleté. I curse the fashion of the revolution, parading my female attributes like the Goddess of Liberty. Liberty for whom? The men who invented her, I suppose.

“Citizen Fourneaux?” my father prompts.

Fourneaux offers me his arm. “A pleasure to have your company, Mademoiselle.”

A voice emerges from the end of the vast hall. “Barbe-Nicole came to play chess with me.” Everyone turns to where François stands in the shadow of heavy drapery.

“I’ll be right there.” Extricating myself from Fourneaux, my heels click on the marble floor as I pass bare rectangles on the walls where religious paintings used to hang. Like us, the Clicquot family had to hide sacred relics during the Revolution. The chessboard stands ready by the window with a view of the vineyard labyrinth between our two families’ properties.

“I probably shouldn’t say this since Monsieur Fourneaux is my godfather, but watch out. He’s a lonely man looking for a wife.” François steps out from the shadow, and I gasp. His eyelids are almost swollen shut. Red welts cover his cheeks and neck; facial hair pokes out haphazardly.

“What happened to you?” I sit at the chess table as he adds another log to the fire.

“The sheep.” He grimaces and reaches across the chessboard to shake my hand. “Good luck.”

Instinctively, I scratch his palm with my fingernail, our oath of friendship.

He pulls his hand back. “Your move.”

The marble chessboard is cold to the touch as I move a pawn, so familiar, yet from another time. All those chess games we played here by the fire, smelling of burning beechwood.

On my next move, he steals a glance. But when I speak to him, his answers are curt.

He moves a black knight across three squares and up two, his fingernails gnawed to the quick. He never bit his nails before. We used to compare our palms, my fingertips reaching his first knuckle. He teased me about my small hands, and I teased him about his fastidious fingernails, clean and squared off. I invented ways to get those hands around my waist.

“Your logistics job sounds interesting,” I say.

He snorts. “It was all right as long as I was shipping within France. But Britain’s trade blockades made shipping weapons and supplies impossible by sea.” Finally, his pawn captures my knight. “I wangled a few stealth maneuvers.” His chuckle crackles like ice breaking on the pond.

I find it hard to concentrate on chess when the boy I held in my heart all those years is finally sitting across from me again. And now, he’s a man. A strange man. Even stranger with his features swollen out of shape. As frightful as he looks, my Tadpole’s got to be in there somewhere. I slide my rook a few squares. “It sounds like you enjoyed the challenge.”

“Anything is better than Philippe’s wool business.” He scratches a welt on his hand while considering his next move. “But, the revolution has been disastrous for businesses, new political leadership killing off the old every year. No stability.” He moves his bishop diagonally and captures my rook. “We’re cannibals eating our brothers, and our neighbors smell it. While General Napoleon was off conquering Egypt, our borders were attacked by Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Germany.”

Seeing my chance, I move my queen into place, poised to capture his king across the board. “Check.”

“That’s what you think.” François blocks me with a pawn; his eyes focused on the chessboard, eyelashes long and thick as I remember.

“So, what will happen to France?” I ask.

He laughs strangely. “Napoleon will kill off thousands and thousands of French soldiers in his wars.”

I move my queen out of his path. “I thought all French soldiers adored Napoleon’s passion for liberty, equality, and fraternity for all men?”

François scoffs. “Napoleon is for Napoleon.” He jumps his knight over my rook and captures my queen. “Check.”

“Not so fast.” I search for ways to save my king.

“I’ve got you in a zugzwang,” François says with a sly smile. “Any move you lose.”

I try to move every which way, but nothing works. The old zugzwang. A spot under my breastbone burns.

“I’ve had a lot of time to play solitaire. I always win.” He leans back with his hands behind his head, exposing scarred slashes on the undersides of his wrists. “But, then again, I always lose.”

My mouth drops open. Quickly, lest he sees my reaction, I reset the chessboard. “Papa said you fought with Napoleon.”

“I met him on the battlefield once. He wouldn’t remember me. I am not a war hero, Barbe-Nicole, no matter what half-truths my father spreads.” He shakes his long hair. “You and I both know I wasn’t in the armée the entire six years.”

“Where were you then?”

“Don’t play coy. I’m sure you heard the sordid details around town.”

“You think I’m a common gossipmonger?” I protest too loud for polite conversation.

“Still the little spitfire who tried to beat me at hide-and-seek.” A sly smile plays at his lips.

“Except that last day in the labyrinth.” Biting my tongue, I wish I could take it back.

His eyebrow raises. “As I recall, you found me then, as well.” His gnawed fingernail traces the marble inlay of the chessboard.

What hurt him so that he slashed his wrists?

“How about a walk?” I say.

“The wind is chilly today.”

“So, you’re afraid of the cold now?” I ask, and he laughs.

Walking through an avenue of dormant maple trees, we pass the horse barns and carriage houses and reach the grapevine labyrinth, which hasn’t been groomed in years. Beautiful gardens became a target of the Reign of Terror, a sign of privilege and wealth. Besides, gardeners have been conscribed to war just like all men under forty.

The stark red canes of the vines are gnarled and tangled, and the pathway is washed away. François sighs, then takes my hand and enters through an unkempt archway. Gravel crunches under my boots, tooled calfskin tied with scarlet ribbons to match my dress, not that he’s noticed my feet, empire dress, or dashing cape, chosen by Lizzette when I confided I was seeing Tadpole today.

“Why did you stay away so long?” I ask, trying to keep up with his brisk pace.

He chews his bottom lip, a nervous habit that conflicts with his strong aquiline nose and prominent cheekbones. Trying to get him to talk, I scratch his palm with my fingernail, signaling our bond. He drops my hand and keeps walking.

I need to break through his shell. “Every night you were gone, I prayed on the brightest star, imagining you were thinking of me when I was thinking of you.”

He stops and gazes at me, and my heart skips.

“Fourneaux is a good man,” he says as if that makes any sense. “Solid, trustworthy…and kind. He makes a good living making wine.”

A gust of wind blows up my long skirt, making me shiver. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Nicolas is looking for a husband for you, is he not?” François turns left into a part of the labyrinth that always confuses me, formidable with barren vines.

“That’s absurd. Monsieur Fourneaux is my father’s age.”

He gnashes at a cuticle. “Still, you could do worse.”

“I’d rather not marry at all. Marriage is a rough bargain for a woman. I’d have to turn over my inheritance to my husband for the privilege of bearing his brats. Then he’d dictate what I do, who my friends are, whether I’d work or be idle.”

He laughs as if I told the best joke in the world, the sound ringing like sleigh bells.

“What’s so funny?”

“Little Barbe-Nicole…” He wipes his eyes, unable to stop laughing. “A whirlwind ready to mow down everything in your path.”

“I’m not little anymore, François.”

We come to a fork in the labyrinth, and I choose the more familiar path.

“Remember how you dragged your doll around with us?” he says. “You never went anywhere without your Marie Antoinette.”

The horror of that time still haunts me. I was fifteen when the queen was beheaded.

“Maman burned my doll in the fireplace.” The grapevines have become so tangled I can’t see a way forward, so I follow François. “She claimed we’d lose our heads, too, if anyone found out my obsession with the queen.” A frog springs across our path and splashes into a mudpuddle. “Do you remember visiting the Queen’s Hamlet in Versailles? How vivacious she was playing boules ball, taking us fishing, feeding the goats?”

François clenches his fists. “Don’t you see what a travesty that was? A little farm in Versailles so the queen could play-act living like a peasant, while the royals hoarded wheat and starved their citizens?”

“You can’t have it both ways,” I challenge him. “Either you are for the royals or the revolutionaries. Which is it?”

“I’m not for anything or anyone anymore,” he sputters, clearly upset. Abruptly, he steps through the vines, leaving me alone.

Not about to chase after him, I retrace our steps, mulling over what I should have said to his outburst. Esprit de l’escalier. Staircase wit; the brilliant thing you should have said, coming to you only as you leave by the stairs. Tadpole is nothing like the light-hearted boy I knew.

When I reach Clicquot Manor, he leans jauntily against the railing, smiling that half-smile that kindles a hot rush from my center. He takes my arm and walks me up the stairs as if he’s been a perfect gentleman all along.

“Want to defend your chess match tomorrow?” His eyebrow arches.

“I promised Papa I’d work on his ledgers in the morning,” I say, annoyed at his sudden reversal and my body’s reaction.

His eyebrow falls, and his disappointment touches me.

“I can come by after I finish.” My eagerness mortifies me, but I can’t resist his invitation.

He smiles crookedly.

“But, don’t think you’ll win again,” I warn.

***

Since I spent my evening honing chess strategies until I was sure to beat François, I’m disappointed to find him playing his violin in that dark corner of the Grand Hall. Beethoven’s “Pathétique,” the strange and haunting song I hated when he first learned it, now permeates my bones with its sorrowful romance.

When he finishes, he opens his eyes. “You came.” A scraggly mustache hangs over his lip, his hair tangles down his back, but his hives faded, and so have the plumy circles under his eyes.

Voices grow loud and heated from Philippe’s office, the smell of pipe smoke seeping under the door. Not at all conducive to the privacy I crave with François.

“Maybe we could go get coffee,” I say, my heart skipping. The café near Place Nationale was our old refuge from our parents.

“You just don’t want me to beat you at chess again.” He rises and grabs his navy wool cape from the closet.

“Or, just maybe I feel like coffee.”

Outside, clouds blanket the sky like fine gray wool, the first droplets sprinkling our faces. As we pass through Place Nationale, workers are finally dismantling the guillotine.

“May the Reign of Terror rest in peace,” François jeers.

“Thank God Almighty.” I start to cross myself.

François grabs my hand. “Not here.” He’s right. Any act of Catholicism can still mean prison in the French First Republic.

A bell rings as he opens the café door for me. Aromas of roasting coffee beans, fresh-baked croissants, and melted chocolate deluge me with memories. The same lacquered oak paneling, wrought-iron tables, and Marseilles linens. We sit down at our old table by the leaded glass window and order chocolate croissants and coffee, his black, mine with lots of cream and sugar. François bites into a croissant, and I steal a glance at his wrists, covered with his linen cuffs.

“The croissants in Switzerland can’t compare to these,” he says.

“I thought you were in Italy.” Chocolate sticks to the roof of my mouth, and I sip hot coffee to melt it.

“After Italy, I went to Switzerland.” He glances out the window at a woman taking in her laundry down from the line before it’s soaked. An old workman waddles home with his toolbox under his arm. So peaceful here on a side street in Reims, yet war rages at our borders.

“Tell me about the war, François.” I blow on my coffee, smelling rich and nutty. “I’ve been stuck here under the watchful eye of the French First Republic, worried about what I wear, whom I visit, what I say, afraid it goes against the new rules. I need to understand better why we’re fighting all these countries.”

“According to revolutionary principles, we’re fighting for liberty, equality, and rights for all men.” He chews his croissant as if that’s all he intends to say. “Hogwash—all of it.”

“You used to be so patriotic. What happened?”

“You really are a nosy marten, aren’t you?” He frowns. “Always with the questions. It’s all coming back to me now. And, you never quit no matter what.”

“So, I’ve been told.” Elbow on the table and chin in my palm. “So, what happened to you? I’m listening.”

He rolls his eyes and drums his fingertips on the table, looking away.

“François?”

He gasps. “My last battle in Italy, I marched my battalion up a hill to make camp for the night. The men were dog-tired, so we didn’t pitch tents, just rolled out blankets under the oaks. But down the other side of the hill, I spied an enemy camp—only one watchman by their fire. So we had to strike before they saw us.” He clenches his steaming cup, his cuffs exposing the red scars.

“We charged down the hill,” he continues, his voice low and tremulous. “My men stole their horses and firearms, then slashed their tents, yipping and screaming like hyenas. The enemy soldiers streamed out in red long johns, half asleep, scrambling to defend themselves, but we had the advantage. Our swords ripped through their flesh, their warm blood flying in our faces.” He drops his chin to his chest and folds his arms. “Is that the glorious war story you wanted to hear?” The odor of guilt and disgust oozes from his pores.

“It was war, François, not you. You were fighting for France. For freedom.”

“We slaughtered boys in the name of freedom.” He snorts. “Did it matter whether they were Italian, Austrian, or French? More citizens have died in the revolution than kings killed in hundreds of years. The wars are senseless and cruel, fought for our power-hungry leaders, not for the people.”

I cover his hand with mine. “I’m sorry I asked you to share it when it is obviously so painful, but I needed to understand what you went through. Women are protected from the truth about what’s going on.”

His strange, exceptional eyes assess me openly, then cloud over again. “We better get back. Your father will think I’ve kidnapped you.”

“Would that be so bad?” I smile.

He flattens my palm to his heart, beating furiously under my fingers. “You were right to forget me, Barbe-Nicole.”

“I never forgot you.”

A glimmer flits through his eyes. “I told you that story so you’d understand everything has changed between us. I am no longer your innocent Tadpole.”

Hard to reconcile this bitter man with the boy I yearned for all those years.

Still raining outside, he takes off his cape and holds it over us. We run past the magnificent Reims Cathedral where French kings were crowned, now relegated to a market for animal feed and farm supplies, a sight so sad I avoid looking at its glorious spires.

“What will you do now that you’re home?” I ask.

“The wool business. What choice do I have?”

“At least you have a business. My parents are herding me to matrimony like a sheep to slaughter.”

“I hate everything about sheep,” he says, kicking at the cobblestones, water spraying. “Their greasy wool, their putrid smell, their terrified cries, the way my skin blows up like a balloon.”

“You loved sorting wool when we were children.”

“You loved sorting wool, so I did it.” He stops, sheltering us with his cape over our heads. “You begged to explore the crayères under Reims, so I lit a lamp and took you, though I hated the dark. You wanted to climb the tallest tree in the forest, so I climbed with you, though heights petrified me.”

“You wanted to spend time with me?” I smile.

He scoffs. “I have a confession.” Pressing his forehead to mine, he smells of chocolate and coffee. “Your Maman paid me a franc to make sure you didn’t get in trouble.”

My head jerks back. “Maman paid you to watch me?”

He sniggers. “Your nannies kept quitting; you were too much to handle.”

Jumping out from under his cape, I walk through the rain as fast as my boots can carry me.

He catches up. “I thought you’d think that was funny.”

“I thought you were my closest friend.” In truth, much more than that. “But now I find out my parents paid you to be with me?” I walk away, raindrops splatting against my cheeks like a thousand slaps.

***

6

J'aimerais bien, mais ma carte de danse est remplie.

I’d love to, but my dance card is filled.

Now that François destroyed the one sure memory I held dear in my life, I think back on all the things people called me: a spitfire, an oddball, a freak of nature, Le Nez.

“Am I really that difficult?” I ask Lizzette as she dries me from the bath.

“You’re a woman who knows her mind. I admire that in you.” She wraps me in a silk robe and ties the bow. “Let me clean up, and I’ll be right in to dress you.”

I kiss her cheek. “I can dress myself.”

She rolls her good eye like a dairy cow. “Your mother will have my head if you aren’t dressed properly for Le Bal des Débutantes.”

How can I escape this annual charade? My sister and brother sit at my dressing console smearing their faces with pots of powders and pigments, leaving smudges on the looking glass.

“And I thought I’d be lonely getting ready,” I tease them.

Clementine sucks in her cheeks and osculates her plump lips like a fish. Her lips are the only plump thing about her. At fourteen, she is tall and lilting as an Easter lily, perfect for the flowing Roman gowns so popular today, while I resemble a laundry sack. She’ll be the most sought-after girl at the ball and set Maman aglow with pride. She applies rouge with long graceful fingers to my brother’s cheeks. The two of them still play dress-up, though, at nineteen, Jean-Baptiste should really give it up.

His long copper hair piles atop a toque on his head, tear-drop jewels gilding the strands like the portrait of Marie Antoinette he keeps in his closet since she was guillotined.

“Don’t be stingy with the rouge, Clementine,” he says. “I want to appear as a rose freshly picked from the garden.”

“You certainly can’t go to the ball like that,” I say.

He stands and pirouettes, flowered tapestry coattails spinning out from his slender waist. “How do I look?”

Quite unfair for him to be so gorgeous. Jean-Baptiste was born a year-and-a-half after me, and people thought we were twins. Same gray eyes, round faces, and ardent-blonde hair, until he hit a growth spurt at thirteen, while I remained under five feet with no chance to lose my baby fat. La vache!

“Hébert will be at the ball, so I want to look splendid.” He shows no signs of growing out of his flamboyance, as Maman calls it. Papa turns a blind eye.

“Do I look splendid?” Lifting a high-heeled shoe to the footstool, he fastens a jeweled buckle, looking up through his coal-thickened lashes. “What’s wrong, mon lapin?” He searches his reflection. “My beauty mark? The bow of my lips? I can always tell when you don’t approve by that adorable pout.”

I gather Clementine into my arms for a hug. Her hair smells pristine as a limestone pool.  “Run along. Your nanny needs to get you dressed. Maman hates it when we’re late.”

Clementine drags her long limbs down the hallway, and for the millionth time, I wonder why I had to favor Grand-mère.

Jean-Baptiste licks his fingernail and separates his coal-dusted eyelashes.

“What do you think you are doing, brother?”

“Save your lecture. Maman has filled my dance card with proper ladies, not a dandy among them.”

“You can’t go through with this.”

“What?”

“Courtship and marriage, of course.”

“That would suit you fine, wouldn’t it, mon lapin?” He flutters his lashes. “I confess to Nicolas that I’m a homosexual, and you inherit Ponsardin Woolens?” Bending over, he rubs his nose on mine, overwhelming my sinuses with patchouli oil. “I can have my cake and eat it too.”

“The saying is, ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it too.’” I wipe a coal smear from his cheekbone. “You don’t even want Ponsardin Woolens.”

“But I’m not fool enough to turn down the biggest wool company in France.” He flounces down on the settee and pats the seat next to him. “How was the pig farm, by the way?”

“Reeking.” I hold my nose.

“So, you are not be-cloved?” He smiles wickedly.

“I won’t marry a pig farmer.”

He circles his arm around my waist. “We’re a sorry lot, the two of us.”

“You should at least tell Papa the truth about yourself so he can protect you,” I say. “The newspaper is filled with executions for unnatural crime. Just yesterday, a seventy-year-old man and his lover were hanged for cross-dressing. You need to be more careful.”

He examines his blue fingernails.

“Periwinkle nail lacquer is not careful,” I say.

He struts in front of me. “It’s nobody’s business what I do. I’m not hurting anyone.” He studies his manicure. “Maybe it’s you who doesn’t approve.”

I grab his hand and kiss those beautiful nails. “I love you precisely as you are.”

Peering into the mirror, he checks one cheek, then the other. “I’m not the first Ponsardin to keep a secret. Remember how Papa was a staunch royalist but switched sides in the revolution?” He pencils a beauty spot on his chin. “We do what we have to do to survive.”

“I’m sure you are right.” I smile most convincingly. But I suspect his future is as repugnant as my own.

***

The Palace of Tau, with her whispering ghosts and vaulted stone archways, takes my breath away. Or, maybe it’s the corset Maman and Lizzette cinched under my Roman gown. As my family walks in the hallowed footsteps of kings and queens, I inhale the ancient aromas of frankincense and rose oil to quell my despair.

Four years ago, at my first ball, my parents held great hopes to betroth me to a wealthy landowner or wholesale merchant, or even a nobleman who’d escaped the Reign of Terror. But after the revolution, when the French First Republic sold off the property they took from churches and noblemen, my father bought up as much land as he could, wiping out my dowry, except for my inheritance from Grand-mère.

Without a dowry, I was left to rely on beauty and wit, and though Lizzette insisted I possess those qualities, I saw the truth in my suitor’s eyes. One waltz around the ballroom, suitors moved on. In the weeks that followed, no one called to ask for my hand. Maman began preparations for the next year, hiring tutors for dance and witty conversation, lecturing me to watch my intake of sweets. The next ball proved even worse, and the next. It was easier to swear off marriage, telling Maman I’d be happier working for Papa in the wool mill. Only partly true. I held out hope that François would come back.

At least now, Maman can focus on sweet Clementine, coiffed with identical arrays of peacock feathers on their heads. Their matching gowns are dyed in an ombre of peacock green to purple, more spectacular than the exotic birds themselves.

Jean-Baptiste takes my arm, overpowering me with his odor. “You lied, mon lapin. The Palace of Tau isn’t a nightmare; it is intoxicating.”

“It’s you who are intoxicating, brother,” I whisper. “I smell your absinthe breath from here.”

“I never leave home without it.” He strokes my cheek with periwinkle nails. “Want some?”

Maman pinches my arm from behind. “Remember, do not quote Diderot or Rousseau. Men do not like bookworms.” She fusses with the pink silk roses Lizzette festooned on my bosom, which definitely does not need more volume.

Papa hands me my dance card. “Doctor Picard received his physician’s degree at Oxford. I’m also quite fond of Citizen Boucher. He champions the French First Republic.”

Jean-Baptiste wags his finger. “Boucher has a goiter the size of a cauliflower. Do you want to bed a cauliflower?”

I laugh loudly, and Maman swats me with her peacock feather fan.

We enter the vast hall with a vaulted wood ceiling, heavy cross beams, a coat of arms carved into the marble fireplace blazing at the far end. Enormous historical tapestries hang on the walls. Marble floors are polished to a shine. Chandeliers glisten above couples dancing among Liberty Trees, symbols of political freedom. The orchestra plays Beethoven’s “Pathétique,” that haunting song François played the other day.

“Is François on my card?” I ask.

Maman yanks a rose from my headpiece and re-pins it, digging a hairpin into my scalp. “Forget him, Barbe-Nicole. He is strange.”

“He broke his fuse.” Jean-Baptiste hits his head with the heel of his hand.

I scowl at him.

“Monsieur Fourneaux is on your card,” Papa says.

“He’s twice my age,” I object.

Maman points with her fan. “Monsieur Souillon is here.”

Just the sight of him makes me hold my nose.

“If you want any say about who you’ll marry, this is your chance,” she says. “You’ll have a profitable proposal by week’s end, one way or another.”

Papa retreats to the mezzanine while Maman settles Clementine on the opposite wall.

A strong hand takes my arm. “You look stunning, ma cherie.” Fourneaux smiles, his exuberant mustache curled to points with the beguiling scent of beeswax. His gold coat, breeches, and silk stockings were fashionable a decade ago but still exude panache. “I’m first.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He points to my dance card. “I made sure I was your first dance.”

“Then, by all means, let’s dance.” I’m guessing he’ll be the least objectionable man all night.

Fourneaux leads me to the dance floor for a quadrille. His firm hand on my waist leads me effortlessly through the steps, surprising for a man his age.

When the music stops, he brings me to a table. “Would you like some punch?”

“I am thirsty.”

He leaves, and I tap my fan to the gay music, watching old men swirling girls half their age around the room. Younger men are a war, but what about all the women widowed from the wars? There’s no ball for them.

Melvin Souillon approaches my table, his body rounder than tall, his thick blond hair cut like a Dutch doll. And that turned-up snout of his, gracious be, can’t the doctors do something about it?

He’s next on my dance card. From the mezzanine railing, Maman twitters her fan at me.

Melvin holds out his pudgy hand. Dragging my feet, I follow him out to the dance floor, but soon, his bouncing and swerving make me feel like a butter churn.

“We moved the pigs to the gully.” He steps on my foot. “You’ll never see them from the house.”

“Remember my disease, Monsieur? I’m dying. I cannot marry you.”

François taps him on the shoulder, a vision in white jacket and trousers, a navy-blue sash over his chest. “I believe I’m next on mademoiselle’s dance card.”

His transformation snags my breath. He’s fresh-shaven, a pencil-thin mustache over well-formed lips. Chestnut hair, brushed and shining, tied with a leather tie. No trace of hives on his prominent cheekbones and Roman nose.

“You don’t mind, do you, Monsieur Souillon?” I say, wriggling from his grasp and taking François’s hand.

“When can you come to see our house again?” Melvin says, his chubby finger hovering midair.

François whisks me away, smelling of wild grass. “You weren’t on my card, you cad.” His ponytail brushes my cheek and sets off a shiver.

“Shhh. Souillon doesn’t need to know.”

The orchestra starts a gay country dance, harpsichord and violins teasing each other. François jumps and skips right on tempo, light on his feet, like he’s a different person than a week ago. Like my Tadpole. The music fills my ears, and we move together step-for-step. That song ends, and another one begins. We don’t return to my table, where Fourneaux watches our every move.

“I thought you wanted me to forget you,” I say as he whirls me around the ancient ballroom. White gowns tied with blue ribbons and evening jackets are a blur behind his striking face. His lips quirk up at the corners, his eyes glimmer like dappled sunlight on a pond.

“A tadpole becomes a frog, and if he’s lucky enough to be kissed by his true love, he becomes a prince.” He smiles the mischievous smile of our childhood.

When the orchestra stops, François leads me outside to the terrace. My foot cramps from my straight shoes, no difference right or left, and too narrow for my small, wide feet.

“You’re limping.” He sits me down on a stone bench and kneels. “Which one hurts?”

“My right.”

He takes off my shoe and presses his thumb into the arch of my foot. His long strokes bring a tingle to more than my foot.

When I shiver, he asks, “How does that feel?”

“Better.” I put my shoe on. “Much better.”

He wraps his navy silk sash around my bare shoulders, then pulls a folded paper from his breast pocket and hands it to me. His scribbled penmanship is hard to make out in the moonlight.

My Shooting Star

As I lay on the rocky battlefield one long, long night,

a star shot across the sky, so bright I imagined it was you.

I confessed my loneliness and shame to that star until it was out of sight.

But when I finally saw you again, I knew no star could ever shine as bright as you.

All the emotions I’ve tried to stuff down bubble up like fermenting grape must, violent and overwhelming. I’m afraid to look at François, but when I do, the colorful prisms of his eyes spark with emotion as deep and frightening as my own. My Tadpole has come back to me.

“Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, you little minx.” Jean-Baptiste camps a pose against the archway. “Maman sent me to tell you a gentleman is waiting at your table.”

“So, you’re her watchdog, now?” I ask.

“Just call me Fi-Fi.” Jean-Baptiste jumps around on tiptoe, hands perched.

“Let’s get you back.” François stuffs the poem in his pocket.

As we pass my brother, I flick his skull with my middle finger and thumb.

Fourneaux is drinking alone at my table. Maman scowls from above.

“Ah, Mademoiselle.” He bows then offers a gilded chair beside him.

François pulls a chair from another table to join us, and makes me smile.

Lifting a glistening bottle from the silver ice bucket, Fourneaux wipes it with a linen towel. “I thought you’d enjoy some vin mousseux, or Champagne, as Madame de Pompadour insisted we call it.” He pours us coupes. “I’m sorry, François, they don’t have our Clicquot-Muiron. They only stocked Moet. But it gives us a chance to compare our competitor.”

François looks into my eyes and clinks my glass. “A la nôtre.” To us.

A common toast, but I can’t help feeling it means more.

“You remembered, François,” Fourneaux says. “Seven years bad luck to toast without looking into a person’s eyes.”

François clinks his glass. “You were a great teacher.”

“The cork is bad,” I say.

“Surely not,” Fourneaux says.

I tap my nose. “The smell is musty, tainted.”

François orders another bottle. I remember how he never second-guessing me—the only person to trust my judgment like that.

My next dance partner shows up, and the men stay at the table, joking and drinking their bottle of Moet. Their eyes follow me around the dance floor. Their attentiveness feels strange yet wonderful at the same time. After each dance, the two of them rate my suitor, recording their score on my dance card. What was to be a dreadful night has become most entertaining, watching them watching me. The tingling in my toes rises through my center until I’m positively giddy with their attention. And champagne.

Returning to the table after my last dance, François is gone.

“Where did he go?”

“Don’t worry about him, ma cherie.” Fourneaux covers my hand with his. “I’m sure you’ve heard he’s unpredictable.”

Pulling my hand away, I pick up my dance card and laugh. François has drawn tiny frogs leaping all over the men’s names.

***

7

Avoir l’esprit de l’escalier.

To have the wit of the staircase.

A week after the ball, and not a word from François. Yet Melvin Souillon persists. When I refuse his latest proposal and tell him not to call on me again, Papa bows his head, muttering the Lord’s prayer, strictly forbidden after the revolution. I’d do anything to relieve his suffering. Except marry Melvin.

The next day, Papa watches me add up the columns of the company ledger.

“Sales are dismal.” I write a figure on a scrap and hand it to him. “That’s what we need to meet payroll.”

He squeezes his eyes closed. “I don’t have it.”

My stomach plummets. “Don’t have it? How can that be?”

“The government insisted businesses buy war bonds. So I had no choice but to oblige them.” He shrugs his shoulders. “We’ll have to let some of the workers go until sales are better.”

I look out through his office door to the factory. These women took over their husbands’ jobs to feed their families when their husbands were conscripted to fight Napoleon’s wars.

“Papa, this is no time to be proud. I’m begging you, take the Clicquot job Fourneaux offered.”

“I told you, I can’t accept Fourneaux’s offer.” He takes out his silver flask.

“Why not, Papa? Is the deal crooked? Is Fourneaux a criminal?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” He swigs from his flask, eyes wallowing in confusion. “But Fourneaux requires something that my conscience cannot abide, though it would benefit us.”

Grabbing his coat from the hook, I hand it to him. “Take the deal today and save our company.”

“You have to come with me.” He tilts his head sheepishly. “Fourneaux is fond of you.”

“We’ll go together and finish this thing.” I pull on my coat. “Besides, I’ve been dying to know what this mysterious business deal entails.” And why François has been avoiding me.

***

When we arrive, François is playing solitaire chess in the great hall outside his father’s office. My heart leaps like those silly frogs he drew on my dance card.

He barely looks up, chucking his thumb at his father’s office. “They’re waiting for you.”

Papa enters and closes the door.

I march over to François. “Why did you leave the ball so abruptly?”

“An argument with my godfather.” He juts his chin at the office door. “What do you know about their negotiations?”

His bitter tone makes me bristle. “Sounds like you disapprove, but Ponsardin Woolens is the largest employer in Reims, and we need this job to support a thousand women trying to support their families.”

François’s mouth twists in a knot. A blue vein pulses his temples.

“What is it?” I ask.

He stares at his torn and raw fingernails, recently bitten to the quick. “The other day, I didn’t tell you the whole truth about the battle.” His shoulders curl inward, forlorn.

I sit across from him. “You don’t have to confess anything, François.”

His right eye twitches. “I need you to understand what kind of man I have become.”

The shudder of his stooped shoulders forewarns the depth of his despair. I force myself to fold my hands and act calm, difficult when acid coats my stomach.

“During the battle, an Austrian soldier, just a boy really, started swinging a club at my horse’s legs,” he says. “I yelled at him to stop, but he kept beating him and beating him. Finally, I raised my sword to frighten him off, but he lifted his face to me.”

François looks away, avoiding my gaze.

“The boy’s blond hair circled his head like a halo. Whiskers soft as goose down. Eyes clear as the sky.” His head trembles. “That boy was the innocent peasant I was fighting to save.”

“So, you spared him,” I say. “That doesn’t make you a coward.”

“Listen, will you?” His fists press his temples, exposing the jagged red scars on his wrists. “I plunged the sword above his collarbone, thrusting it down as far as it would go, twisting until I heard his blood gurgle.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I watched the life force drain from his eyes.”

His guilt smells like spoiled meat; my sinuses throb in horror. My head screams with pain for François and that Austrian boy. War and killing have ruled France for a decade; the rulers and rules keep changing. Should François bear the guilt?

“I killed a boy for the Revolution.” He bites off a sliver of his fingernail. “And, then, in all my blazing triumph, I deserted my battalion. Just walked away, Barbe-Nicole. Walked night and day until I fell to the ground. I lay in the field, remembering that boy’s eyes frost over--again and again.” His head lurches backward, and he groans the loneliest, bleakest sound.

I touch his arm, but he jerks away.

“When the armée found me, I was incoherent. They imprisoned me in a Swiss asylum.” He sneers. “Shackled me inside a dark cell with straw on the stone floor. My iron cuffs and collar weren’t long enough to lie down. No one visited, just shoved a plate of gruel under the door. All I thought about was what I did in the name of freedom.” His forehead drops into his hands, exposing those jagged scars across his wrists.

My own wrists sear with pain, and I reach for his. “Did this happen in the asylum?”

He nods and squeezes his eyes closed. “That’s when they sent for my father.”

“It wasn’t your fault, François.” My thumbs rub his wrists, wanting to wipe out his memory. “None of it was your fault. Your heart was too tender for war.” I’d give anything to heal his pain if it takes a lifetime. Can’t bear to see him this way.

The office door swings open, releasing clouds of smoke and laughter. Papa, Philippe, and Fourneaux strut into the salon sporting pipes. I stand in front of François to let him gather his wits.

Philippe blows a stream of smoke to the frescoed ceiling. “Well, children, we have exciting news to announce.”

Fourneaux carries over a silver wine bucket to the table near us, his dark eyes sparkling. “I brought a bottle of exceptional champagne to celebrate. I want you to remember this moment.” He pops the cork, smells it, and hands it to me, smelling nutty and sweet like grapes ripened late in the fall. Pouring the champagne, he offers me the first coupe like a holy challis.

François refuses a glass and stares out the window.

Philippe dismisses his behavior with a wave of his hand and makes a toast. “To Alexandre Fourneaux, for saving our companies from ruin.”

“And General Napoleon,” Papa says, and we drink, savoring the delicious champagne.

“Why drink to Napoleon?” I ask. “His wars have killed millions and decimated our economy.”

“Politics is complicated ma cherie,” Fourneaux says. “But one thing is certain. It pays to be on the winning side.” He raises his glass and drinks. The men join him. “You see, General Napoleon buys wine from me and knows I worked with wool companies. So he asked me to procure new uniforms for the Grande Armée.”

Philippe claps his hand on Papa’s shoulder. “Fourneaux hired our companies to fill the order.”

“Well done, Monsieur.” I raise my glass to Fourneaux. “So that is the secret deal you’ve been negotiating.”

“That’s not the secret, is it Monsieur Ponsardin?” François spits out his words. “Why don’t you tell Barbe-Nicole what Fourneaux asked in exchange for awarding you this contact?”

Papa wipes his forehead with his handkerchief, then comes to me, clasping my hands between his sweating palms. “Mon chou…I have promised your hand in marriage to our great friend, Alexandre Fourneaux.”

I laugh. “Oh, Papa, how you tease.”

Pushing back his shoulders, he assumes the lofty tone of his political speeches. “This marriage will bond and protect our families in these troubled times and beyond.”

François scoffs. “You men disgust me, bargaining off Barbe-Nicole like she’s chattel.”

When the cruel truth settles in, my heart constricts into a cannonball and explodes. “Papa, you traded me for this contract?”

He bows his head, his voice dire. “If we don’t get this contract, we’ll have to close Ponsardin Woolens.”

His callousness lodges in my lungs. “I barely know Monsieur Fourneaux, let alone love him.”

Philippe Clicquot raises his forefinger. “Ahh…love comes after nuptials, Barbe-Nicole. You will see. Marriage is simply a business contract, right, gentlemen? And this one is most fortuitous.”

“Fortuitous for who?” François yells.

A dilemma churns in me like a tornado, kicking up stones and rubble against my ribcage. Unable to breathe, I steady myself on the nearest chair.

Fourneaux takes off his beret and places it on his heart, beseeching me with the robust and tender voice of an opera tenor. “We will live in a stone house in the vineyards. You’ll have servants as you do now. Your father said you want to learn to make wine, and I will teach you everything you want to know.” He kneels before me, takes a velvet box from his pocket, and opens it. “I want you to have my mother’s wedding ring, Barbe-Nicole.” He shoves the ring past my knuckle. “Coupe de foudre.” Literally: struck by lightning. Though, Fourneaux means: love at first sight.

“Could you excuse us a moment?” Grabbing Papa’s sleeve, I drag him out to the hallway washroom and rub soap around the ring. “You thought you could trade me like a sheep?” The ring refuses to budge.

“You insisted I take this job to save the company, remember?” Papa says.

“Oh. Oh, no.” My hand swabs my face as the realization takes hold. “This is why you didn’t want to take the uniform deal?”

He nods and swigs from his pocket flask.

A moment of reckoning. Am I selfish enough to sacrifice our employees so that I do not have to marry Fourneaux? And what about François? Sliding my tastevin along its chain, I rack my brain for a solution. “Clarity and courage. Courage and clarity.”

Finally, an idea strikes like coup de foudre. “Papa, a woman deserves a courtship before accepting a proposal, correct?”

“Your point?”

“I will accept a courtship from Fourneaux, and you can take the contract.”

Papa hugs me. “Your sacrifice is admirable.”

“Think nothing of it.” The contract will be too far underway when I decide whether to accept.

***

As soon as my courtship with Fourneaux begins, François retreats to his bed-chamber. Hoping to talk to him, I come every day with Papa to take notes for the new partners about their uniform project, where they can procure enough wool, who will make the patterns, and the price of new spinning wheels, looms, and scissors. After endless quibbling between them, we eat a lunch of pigeon soup or the like. Every day, when I excuse myself to the washroom, I linger at the stairway hoping to catch François’s eye, but I nary hear a sound, only a faint whiff of his smell which I hold in my lungs as long as possible. I find myself dawdling at the staircase longer each day.

One day, Philippe catches me by the banister. “François needs his rest. He is sick again.”

“Maybe he would like company,” I say.

He grips my shoulder. “Trust me; you are better off with Fourneaux.”

Anger prickles my spine. “What are you saying?”

“François told me what you meant to each other.” He lowers his glasses, his old eyes carrying more pain than a human ought to bear. “You were children. He doesn’t expect you to love him now, after what he’s experienced. He’s a broken man.” Philippe takes my arm and walks me back to the dining room.

“Let me talk to him, at least,” I say. “Before it’s too late.”

Philippe’s step falters but doesn’t let go. “Already too late, my dear.”

I cannot let François sink into despair.

***

Later that afternoon, Fourneaux takes me on a drive through Grand-mère’s vineyards, thrilled to extoll his knowledge, explaining the cultivars of grapes, trellis systems to support the vines, and planting techniques, all infinitely more fascinating than the price of wool. We pick baskets of chardonnay in the Côte des Blancs until the rough vines poke at my dress and tear a button off my vest. My hands are so dirty there is only white around my ruby engagement ring, which I’ve stopped trying to get off. Maman says it makes my chubby fingers look slimmer.

Laughing and eating grapes, we return late to Clicquot Manor. I look as if I’ve rolled in grapes instead of picked them. I don’t care. It’s the happiest I’ve been in a while until I see François’s shrouded window on the third floor. I must find a way to shake him from his mood, but I know that he’ll be sad as long as this courtship continues. Even sadder if I accept Fourneaux’s proposal.

Fourneaux parks near the wine cellar. “I have a surprise.” He jumps down from the rig like a much younger man. But as he lands, he twists his back and lurches forward, growling like a bear caught in a trap. “Oh, merde. Merde. Merde.” His meaty hand grabs his lower back. “I can’t straighten up.”

I jump down from the rig to help him to the table. “Don’t try to stand. I’ll get ice.”

“There’s ice in the cellar.” He chucks his chin to the planked doorway. “I wanted this moment to be special, so I chilled a bottle of Ruinart made by your great-grand-père.”

“So thoughtful,” I say, truly touched. “I haven’t tasted that champagne since Grand-mère passed.”

Opening the planked door, I see only darkness. Cool, clammy air hovers around me. It is not a shed as it seemed outside but a stairway to underground caves. Hundreds of bottles line wooden wine crates into the blackness. I find a pewter bucket of ice with a hand-blown bottle covered with greenish powder smelling of wet shoes. A pair of coupes beside it. I wrap some ice in my handkerchief and bring out the champagne.

Fourneaux hunches over the table.

“Hold this ice on your back, and I’ll pour.” I pop the cork, check for mold or dryness, then sniff. Yeast and peaches. I pour the golden liquid into the coupes.

He clicks my glass. “To Ruinart’s great-granddaughter and your legacy of champagne.”

“So, that’s it?” My glass hovers midair. “You want to marry me for my heritage?”

He laughs as if I am joking. “Of course not, ma cherie.” He raises his glass again. “To us.”

That toast rankles too, but not enough to pass up Ruinart champagne, fruity and rich as the apricots from the tree where François read me Rousseau. I gaze up at his window.

Fourneaux studies me over the rim of his glass. “Your great-grand-père would have been so proud of you.”

“Hmmm.” I focus on the sumptuous champagne, bubbles bursting on my lips, letting them play on the tip of my tongue, then roll them back, forming an O with my mouth, sucking in air over the foam. The taste tantalizes the back of my tongue and my throat. Fourneaux still stares at me.

“How is your back?” I ask.

His eyes crinkle. “Once we finish this bottle, I’ll be fit as a fiddle.”

I pour us another glass. The sun has sunken lower in the sky, painting clouds in plumy purples and pinks.

“Your father claims you are Le Nez,” he says.

I huff. “My parents think it’s a curse.”

“Oh, no ma cherie.” He grasps my hand. “Do you realize how valuable a La Nez is to a vigneron?” His eyes fill with such yearning I look away, slurping the golden liquid from the rim.

“You drink with such gusto.” He laughs and doesn’t look so pitiful anymore.

“That is quite the wine cellar below. Certainly, the Clicquots can’t drink all that wine.”

He laughs. “Monsieur Clicquot sells wine along with his woolens. He started giving wine as gifts to his wool merchants, but over the years, he started selling wine as well.”

“Clever,” I say, wishing we’d thought of that. But Papa is always too busy with politics to dream of such things.

“When did you discover you were a Le Nez?” He leans closer.

“My grand-mère tested me when I was little. I could always pick out the best chocolate by the smell.” I giggle, feeling the effects of champagne. “Chocolate and champagne are my favorite foods on earth.” I grasp my waist. “Can’t you tell?”

“You are lovely. Look at the Goddess of Liberty. She is no svelte nymph.” His eyes linger on my décolleté. “Don’t let anyone tell you you aren’t comely. Reddish blonde hair and skin smooth as cream.” His hand touches my cheek, then slides down to my collarbone. I fear I’ll have to slap him.

But, Papa pokes his head out from Clicquot Manor. “Are you all right, Barbe-Nicole?”

Fourneaux jerks his hand back, but it’s too late. Papa saw him touching me, the empty champagne bottle between us, my dress shredded and buttons torn off my vest.

“What are you thinking, man?” Papa yells. “Courtship does not include sampling the wares.” He searches my body head to toe. “Did he…hurt you?”

“Nicolas, nothing happened,” Fourneaux says.

I shake my head, but Papa’s fury explodes. “I have half a mind to cancel the contract.”

“Papa, no. The company needs this work.” I tug his sleeve. “Let’s go home. We’re late.”

Fourneaux holds his arms out from his sides. “Nothing happened, Nicolas, I’m telling you.”

Papa helps me into the rig and snaps the reins. I look up to François’s window.

His palm presses against the windowpane.

***

8

Comme on fait son lit on se couche.

As you make your bed, so must you lie in it.

Drinking with a man without a chaperone is a most unforgivable offense. When Maman finds out what I’ve done, she yells that I’ve ruined my last chance at marriage. She is sure the scandal has permeated Reims, and our family will be forever shunned.

Accusations and blame explode between Fourneaux and Papa, both threatening to quit the uniform contract. Only I can save it. If only I had the courage of Joan of Arc, sacrificing herself for the people of France. (Though, poor Joan was burned at the stake for wearing men’s clothes, a fact Jean-Baptiste loves to quote.)

In my case, I must sacrifice for our thousand employees who’ve struggled to put food on the table during Napoleon’s wars. Citizen Bernard with her wooden teeth and failing vision, Yvonne with the infant she hides in her lunch basket, and Prudence, the spinner with six hungry children at home. And, the contract means as much to Papa as our employees. If he loses Ponsardin Woolens, he’ll lose his councilman position and his beloved Hotel Ponsardin.

I call a meeting at Clicquot Manor to set the record straight. But as Papa and I follow the doorman down the hallway, I feel the burning fear Joan of Arc must have felt facing her accusers. God help me. I slide my tastevin on its chain. Clarity and courage. Courage and clarity.

François sits at the chessboard by the window. Philippe and Fourneaux stand by the long table in front of the fire.

“Gentlemen.” I clear my throat. “Thank you for coming. I thought it best if we clear the air. We all have a lot to lose if this unfortunate incident is allowed to fester.”

Fourneaux straightens his ascot. “I never meant to dishonor you, Barbe-Nicole. I was only trying to share your great-grand-père’s heritage with you to make a point. We were meant to make wine together. It runs in your blood, and I am the one to make your dreams come true.”

His sincerity squeezes my heart. “No offense taken, Monsieur Fourneaux. And, I believe we have a witness to your behavior.” I turn to François. “Have we not?”

François stands. “My godfather was nothing but a gentleman.”

“Thank you, my boy.” Fourneaux turns to Papa. “Now that you know nothing happened to tarnish your daughter’s reputation, I would ask your permission for her hand at marriage.”

Papa brushes his palms together. “I see no reason to stand in your way.” The older men break into laughter, shaking hands and slapping backs.

“I’m sorry, Monsieur Fourneaux,” I say, stepping toward them. “But my father cannot speak for me, for I am already betrothed.”

Papa chuckles nervously. “Barbe-Nicole has a wicked humor.”

Fourneaux crosses his arms on his broad chest. “Melvin Souillon finally wooed you with his wealth?”

“I am betrothed to your godson.” I gird myself for their outrage.

Fourneaux’s mouth opens and shuts again. Phillipe balloons his cheeks, and Papa’s chin drops to his chest.

“Betrothed to me?” François blinks rapidly, running his hand through his long hair.

I walk to him, holding his gaze. “The night before you left for the war. You pressed your hand on my heart and asked me to wait for you.”

“We were children.” He rubs the back of his neck. “It isn’t fair to hold you to our oath after everything I told you about me.”

“Especially after what you told me, François. You entrusted me with your greatest shame. It made me realize what we shared all those years ago and what we share now.”

François leans so close his mouth brushes my ear. “I can’t let you sacrifice yourself to marry me.” His scent is like nature itself, vulnerable yet virile.

“I know what I’m doing,” I whisper. “Are you with me?”

Slowly, deliberately, he kneels on one knee, looking up at me with his ethereal eyes. “Will you marry me, Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin?”

The moment holds fulfillment and disaster in equal measure, and I embrace it with open arms. “Absolutely, I will marry you, François.”

Fourneaux pounds the table with his beefy fist. “Stop this travesty, or I will take the uniform deal elsewhere.”

Papa cocks his white head at me. “May I have a word with you?”

“Nothing you say will change my mind,” I say, grasping François’s hand. “I’m sorry to ruin your deal, but all those years courting, all those suitors, all those betrothals…now, I realize I was just biding my time until François returned.”

I hand back Fourneaux’s ruby ring; my knuckle rubbed raw. “You’ll find a woman who deserves this honor, Monsieur.”

His eyes bulge from their sockets, his swollen lips sputtering like a mad dog. “You selfish, spoiled wench. You could have had everything, but now you destroy the biggest business contract since the revolution.” He thumps François on the sternum. “And you. I loved you like a son. I held you in my arms for your baptism.”

François thrusts out his chest. “You taught me to stand up for myself, and that is what I am doing. I finally stand before all of you and ask my beloved to be my bride.”

Fourneaux sizes us up. “You’re throwing your lives down the drain and taking everyone with you.” He stomps out, his footfalls sounding heavy and final.

Our fathers run after him.

“What about the contract, Barbe-Nicole?” François asks, his voice quavering. “How can we put our own happiness ahead of our parents’ survival?”

“Fourneaux cannot stop the job.” I place my hands on François’s chest. “The spinners are spinning yarn for the weavers to make the fabric. We’ve dyed the fabric and cut the patterns. Seamstresses are already sewing trousers and, soon, will start on jackets.

He tweaks my nose. “Clever, Barbe-Nicole. Always so clever.” But his eyes cloud over. “What about poor Fourneaux?”

I quote The Anatomy of Wit. “The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war.”

“You believe that?” he asks.

“Fourneaux would hate being married to a stubborn and opinionated woman like me.” Sweeping my guilt into a dark corner of my soul.

“But you’ll make me suffer?” he teases.

My lips reach for his. “Terribly.”

Years of longing intensify François’s kisses, rekindling the embers that started with hide-and-seek and tadpoles.

***

9

Est-ce un croque en bouche ou un sort?

Is it cream puffs or a curse?

“The revolution has sucked the romance out of France,” I tell my husband of five minutes as we walk out of our civil ceremony. The courthouse is the only place to wed since churches were outlawed. “After all those years of Maman’s coaching and visitations, I expected more from a wedding.”

We’d waited in the airless courtroom for two hours to see the judge, and then he took less than a minute to marry us. Raise your right hands, utter the oath, sign the certificate. Married in the eyes of the First French Republic. It’s as hot and smelly outside the courtroom as inside; smoke-stacks belch sulfur, tanneries reek of toxic dyes, slaughterhouses of congealed blood.

“I’m sure our families will have a dinner party.” François thrusts his tongue into his cheek.

Gazing up at the flying buttresses of Reims Cathedral, I can’t help feeling we are missing something. “Ever since I was a girl, Maman painted romantic pictures of my aristocratic wedding. I heard the trumpets, smelled the sweet profusion of roses, tasted the wedding Croquembouche. Now, the Republic doesn’t even allow our families to see us wed.”

“You’re disappointed.” His gaze darkens, and I realize how spoiled I sound.

“I don’t mean it like that. You could never disappoint me.”

He draws me to him, lips moving on mine, and I lose all sense of where we are, not wanting the sensation to end. A prickle springs from my center. “Oh. Oh my.” I grasp my chest.

He pulls back. “Am I hurting you?”

I smile mischievously. “Enticing me.”

“Good.” His fingers stroke my neck. “The wedding may have disappointed you, but I can assure you our wedding night will not.”

***

When we reach Hotel Ponsardin, Maman claps her hands from the upstairs landing. “What took so long? François, your father is waiting for you in the carriage house.”

He kisses my cheek and strides out, looking like a new man, confidant and proud.

“Hurry up, Barbe-Nicole,” she says. “You look like a sweaty sheepdog.”

I climb the sweeping staircase. “Thank you, Maman. Your compliments mean everything to me.”

“Lizzette drew you the nuptial bath of rosemary and nettle to wash away old loves and romances before your wedding.”

“What old romances?” I scoff. Regardless, Lizzette helps me into the copper tub and sings me a romantic Trobairitz tune that hails from her ancestors of the thirteenth century.

Maman returns too soon. “I’ll take it from here, Lizzette. Make sure her dress is ready.”

“You don’t want the steam to ruin your hair, Maman,” I say. She has not bathed me since--ever.

Reconsidering, she pats the chartreuse hummingbirds in her hair. “This is my only chance to talk to you alone.”

Uncomfortable under her scrutiny, I cup my hands over my breasts, glancing down at my pooching belly.

“What did Nicolas give for your dowry?” She scrubs my knuckles as she used to after I made mud pies.

“Don’t you know?”

She lifts my short wide foot and washes between the toes. “Your father doesn’t consult me on finances. Something you’ll have to get used to now. As I’ve explained, men manage business and finances, and women handle the home, children, and social life.” The warble in her voice belies her factual manner.

“Papa gave us Grand-mère’s Bouzy vineyards with two windmills,” I say. “Philippe gave us property in Quatre-Champs, Tours-Sur-Marne, and Bisseuil.”

She holds up a linen towel for me. “You’ve done well then--unless François dies.”

Huffing with disgust, I step out of the tub. “Can’t you be happy for me this one day?”

“You must hire a lawyer to attach a codicil to your marriage contract to keep your dowry upon François’s death.” She dries my ears. “Inheritance laws intentionally leave out surviving widows. François’s estate, including your dowry, will be left to Philippe Clicquot otherwise.”

My head throbs from her gardenia perfume. “Stop, Maman. Not on my wedding day.”

Her voice rises. “If François dies tomorrow, you’ll be left with nothing.” She hands me my dressing gown, and I slide my arms in the sleeves.

“He wouldn’t dare die tomorrow. It’s our honeymoon.”

Leading me by the shoulders to the vanity table, she sits me down. “I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t tell you this now, while your father can still have the marriage annulled.” Her comb tugs the knots in my wet hair then parts it for braids across the crown of my head. “You don’t know the whole story of François. He has--moods, terrible moods, monstrous moods.”

“I love François, moods and all.”

“You don’t understand.” Her voice trembles. “François may be possessed by demons. His parents have tried everything from blood-letting to purgatives to opium. He’s made his mother sick with worry.”

Her scare tactics infuriate me. “Then, we are perfectly suited, because I make you sick, too.”

“You never listen to me. Why don’t you listen?” She pins my braids with red rosebuds and white orange blossoms.

“Not when you tell me my husband’s a lunatic, I’m not listening to you.”

“Lizzette, bring in the dress,” Maman calls. “We’re late,”

Lizzette beams as she carries in a creation inspired by the king’s court, stunning and familiar somehow. Russet, plum and bronze brocade, a sweetheart neckline, a train of embossed velvet shot through with golden threads, shimmering in the sunlight streaming through the draperies.

“I had Lizzette sew it from your drawing.” Maman unrolls my old drawing, long forgotten.

“You made this for me?”

Lizzette’s mouth twists, cheeks blotched, holding back a gush of emotion.

“You were twelve when you drew this.” Maman wipes her cheek. “We had just talked about having your wedding in Reims Cathedral.” She crosses herself. “That year, the Jacobins forbid Catholic weddings. I thought at least you could have your dress.”

I lean to kiss her, but she turns a cheek. Maman can’t abide closeness, except with Clementine.

“Come show me when you are ready.” She steps out of my dressing room.

Lizzette helps me into a chemise and petticoat, then lowers the masterpiece over my arms. The dress sticks at my chest, impossible to tug down. Much too tight.

“How does it look?” Maman calls.

“Just a moment, Madame.” Lizzette lifts it off, and I feel ashamed. Too many pastries lately.

“Nothing will ruin your special day.” Lizzette inserts her scissors into the seam and lets it out to a more forgiving seam. She winks her wayward eye.

When I walk into my bed-chamber, Maman is fussing with her emerald necklace in the mirror. She sees me and gasps. “You look just like Grand-mère when she was young.” Unclasping her necklace, she holds it out. “Wear this. It was hers.”

I hold up my palm. “No, I can’t possibly. It’s your favorite.”

Her face goes pale and pinched. “It’s not mine, Barbe-Nicole. I…I…borrowed it until now.” She lays the necklace in my hands, sparkling and solid. “Grand-mère left it in her will.”

“To me? She left it to me?” Grand-mère used to let me wear the emerald necklace when we played dress-up, telling me she’d give it to me. But I wasn’t surprised when Maman wore it to Grand-mère’s funeral. It seemed only fitting at the time.

“We didn’t get along, your Grand-mère and I,” she says. “We were estranged until you were born. But when you were born, she visited all the time.”

She sounds small and pitiful, yet her deception enrages me. “So, you kept Grand-mère’s heirloom for yourself to punish me for your jealousy?” I lay the necklace on the dressing table. “Keep it, Maman. Grand-mère gave me so much more than an emerald necklace. She accepted me for who I am, with all my faults. And now, you don’t need to worry about your chubby, willful, cursed daughter anymore. I am married to my best friend, who you tell me is as broken as I am.”

Maman blanches, then snatches up the necklace and leaves.

Of course, she does.

Walking to my sleigh bed, I reach between my mattress and headboard and pull out the gold tastevin cup Grand-mère gave me. To whom much is given, much is expected. But what is expected? My greatest gift is marrying François, two oddballs destined to be together. Turning over the tastevin, I trace the anchor. François is my anchor, and I am his. Whatever we’ll face, we’ll face together. I let the tastevin rest over my heart and accept the bewildering challenge handed down to me.

***

Father waits for me in the foyer, handsome in royal court attire, pantaloons, stockings, a waistcoat stretched over his expanding stomach, a decade since he dressed this way. He takes my hands and steps back, his eyes traveling from my satin slippers to my braid crowned with roses and orange blossoms.

“Truth be told, I never thought I’d live to see you married.” He opens the cellar door, and violin music lilts up from the crayère below. “Since we couldn’t get Reims Cathedral, we booked the crayère.”

My heart beats madly. My wedding will be in the crayères François and I explored as children, a hallowed place of mystery and beauty, discovery and ritual, where Grand-mère tested me for Le Nez. I haven’t had the heart to venture down since she died, too sad without her.

At the bottom of the stairs, the tunnel opens to a grand chamber glowing yellow with a hundred, no, a thousand candles tucked into crevices and ledges carved into the rock. The buttery smell of beeswax infuses the clean scent of chalk. Gilded chairs face an altar laid with gold brocade—a hallowed cathedral for our wedding. Chills dance up my spine.

Across the chamber, François plays his violin with candles lit around him like a saint. His jubilant smile heartens me. My best friend. Now my husband. The only one who understands me, and I, him. His violin bow dips and rises dramatically, the sound spiraling through the chamber.

Relatives hold white ribbons to block my way to François.

“You must slash your way through obstacles to find true love.” Jean-Baptiste winks; his teal eye shadow matches his velvet pantaloons and waistcoat.

Clementine hands me stork scissors. “May you be blessed with many children.”

Children? I’m sure François wants a son. Men always want sons. I cut the ribbon.

François’s parents hold the next ribbon. Catherine-Françoise smells strongly of laudanum, her eyelids half-mast. Her trembling fingers let the ribbon slip away, and I step over it to detract attention from her fragile state.

Maman holds the last ribbon with Fourneaux. I suppose they had to invite him after he kept the uniform contract with our companies.

“I knew you’d make a stunning bride.” He sneers indignantly, the jilted suitor.

Snipping the ribbon, I walk past them to François, his violin bow moving deftly across the strings--Love Story by Beethoven. Everyone and everything falls away but François’s ethereal eyes that tease me, read me Voltaire, share fears and hopes, shine only for me.

Setting down his violin, he reaches out, and I take his hand, feeling the calluses on his fingertips, thinking of other hidden scars. I vow to heal the wounds of his past and help him thrive.

Our families are seated, and a monk steps out from a shadowed passageway. When he lowers his hood, I draw a quick breath. He’s our own Father Bernard, who disappeared after the Reign of Terror. I thought he was killed with the rest of the priests.

His large hands cradle a rare and ancient Holy Bible for which Jacobins would decapitate him. Yet Papa, our Jacobin leader, has invited him to perform a Catholic wedding for me. The realization makes me shiver. Papa risks punishment by death to bring me the wedding day I was promised as a girl, not letting the laws of the day interfere. Candlelight illuminates his wrinkles of worry and struggle. His eyes shine with devotion to God and family. This service is not just for me, but for him, and for everyone who worships God, regardless of government decrees. My heart fills with gratitude.

The priest’s voice resonates through the caves with ancient wedding rites that bind our souls with majesty and meaning.

“François Clicquot, will you have this woman to be your wife, to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health? And forsaking all others, keep only to her as long as you both shall live?”

“I will.” François’s gaze mesmerizes me.

“Will you, Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, obey François…”

Jean-Baptiste sniggers at Obey. Not something that comes naturally to me.

“…as long as you both shall live?”

“I will.” I will try. Just how important is the Obey part of marriage?

While the monk continues, I breathe in François’s scent, fresh and evocative as if he’d rolled down a grassy hill moments before, triggering a tingling in my heart.

As the priest pronounces us man and wife, Fourneaux draws his sword, swift and unswerving, resentment rearing its vicious head.

I shriek, echoing through the chamber, and François shields me.

His sword slashes through the air, slicing off the neck of a jeroboam of champagne he holds in his other hand, showering François and me in golden foam.

Nervous laughter burbles from my mouth. “What was that?”

“It’s called sabering,” François explains. “When Napoleon conquers a village, he confiscates their champagne and lops off the tops with his sword.”

Philippe presents us with a single sliver chalice. “We saved this Clicquot-Muiron vintage from the year François was born, for the day he’d be married. I never imagined I’d see my son—” He pounds his fist to his heart, too choked up to continue.

François and I drink from the chalice, cheek to cheek, the twenty-five-year-old vintage tasting yeasty and rich. The toasts proceed amidst cheers and laughter. My third cup makes me delightfully dizzy.

Lizzette wheels in a cart with the wedding Croquembouche, a towering pyramid of cream puffs held together with a web of hard caramel. “I know how my girl likes her sweets.”

“Oh, my goodness!” Clementine jumps up to get one.

Maman holds her back. “The wedding couple must eat the top cream puff with no hands for the partnership to be blessed.”

“What happens if they can’t?” Clementine asks.

“The marriage will be cursed,” Catherine-Françoise says, the first we’ve heard from her.

Clementine’s pretty forehead wrinkles.

“Nothing but a wives’ tale.” Philippe clamps his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“Forgive her. She’s not well,” François whispers.

“I don’t believe in superstitions,” I tell him, though it’s not entirely true.

François and I stand on opposite sides of the pastry pyramid. Aromas of sweet cream, butter, and vanilla, caramelized sugar intoxicate me. On tiptoe, I reach my chin to the top and see François looking cross-eyed at the cream puff, making me giggle. But this contest involves our future, so I’m not about to fail. At the nod of my head, we bite into the top cream puff together, fluff oozing from the buttery dough. Whipped cream frosts François’s mustache. Giggling like crazy, I wipe it off, brushing against the cream puff, which tumbles from its caramel cage. Lurching forward to save it, I slip on whipped cream and fall to the chalk floor, pain shooting up my leg. I watch in horror as the Croquembouche tower topples on me, cream puffs rolling like boules balls.

Catherine-Françoise rushes to help. So, I think. But instead, she winds her hand back and slaps me. “I told François you were too headstrong and selfish,” she shrieks. “Now you’ve cursed your marriage.”

Holding my smarting cheek, I try to make sense of what she’s saying.

“I’m sorry,” Philippe says, grabbing his wife’s arm and waist, dragging her up the stairs. “She doesn’t mean it. She’s not herself lately.”

The agony in François’s eyes shoots straight through my heart, and I wonder if he’ll run after her. But he shakes his head and sits down beside me.

“Delicious, aren’t they?” He picks up a cream puff from the chalk floor and bites into it. “Better than wedding cake.” He offers me one, the sweet cream taking away some of the bitterness on my tongue.

“Not bad.” I smile.

Clementine joins us. “I want to try.” She licks the cream cautiously.

Jean-Baptiste sits cross-legged next to me. “I adore creampuffs. They’re like eating clouds.” He takes one in each hand, biting each one in turn.

Lizzette piles the rest on the silver tray and sets it between us like a picnic. “Eat up, eat up. It is bad luck not to eat all the cream puffs.” She presses her hand on her mouth, realizing her gaff.

Doing their festive best to save the occasion, Papa and Maman pull up chairs, and Fourneaux pours more champagne. We stuff ourselves with cream puffs and champagne, my cheek still stinging from Catherine-Françoise’s slap, her prediction of doom ringing in my head.

***

10

Sauter du coq à l'âne

Jumping from the rooster to the donkey.

We spend our honeymoon in the farmhouse the Clicquots gave us in Bouzy, between the vineyards of Montagne de Reims and the Marne River, bringing only Lizzette to serve us. Away from his family and the demands of the wool business, François becomes the spirited, adventurous boy with whom I grew up, with one glorious exception. Our childhood love is overtaken by a curling passion that binds us together like vines in the forest.

Oh, I am anxious about our wedding night. As Lizzette brushes my hair in the mirror, I panic. Not only am I cursed with Le Nez but also cursed with a sweet tooth that makes me decidedly plump.

“François likes a woman of substance.” Lizzette winks her wayward eye. “Or he wouldn’t have chosen you.”

By the glimmering light of the lantern, she artfully wraps me in the velvet robe she designed for this night.

François waits by the four-poster bed, his hair loose and gleaming around his shoulders. His silk nightshirt unbuttoned at the top. The sight of his muscled chest beckons me to delve into that uncharted territory. I feel suddenly shy, remembering my double curse.

He has lighted candles all around our bedchamber, and my first thought is to blow them out. He’s never seen me naked, and now it is too late to change his mind. He parts the organdy drapes of the canopy bed, and I climb in, laying back on goose-down pillows, trying to still my heart. I am under a spell, watching a fairytale unfold from afar. I don’t know how to make it real.

François slowly unties my robe, slipping it down one side to kiss the mole on my shoulder. But then, quite on its own, the robe falls to my waist.

He gasps at the sight of me, his eyes round with wonder, his hand reaching for my breast. Seeing his desire makes me laugh, and the awkward spell between us is broken. We become ourselves, relishing our touch, our smells, our sensations, uniquely us.

I crave the smell of him, the weight of his body on mine, the sureness we have each other. I sleep tangled in his limbs, a feeling of belonging permeating my skin.

Most nights, after he falls asleep, he thrashes and groans, crying out orders to phantom soldiers. Waking him with a kiss, I sponge away his sweat, rubbing his temples and holding him tight until his breathing matches my own. Though François defected from war, it rages on within him. He says there’s nothing to discuss. Yet, those terrifying moments bind us as surely as our lovemaking.

In the mornings, I smell his scent in the sheets and reach for him. But he’s gone, as has become his habit, rising at dawn and walking out. He returns a couple of hours later to breakfast on apricot brioche Lizzette prepares, then asking for eggs and country bacon, his appetite more ferocious than mine, yet he doesn’t gain an ounce.

He won’t share where he’s been, which makes me uneasy. As loving as he is, he keeps secrets, shutting me out.

Yet, as we eat breakfast, he chatters eagerly about what he’s planned for our day, barely able to catch his breath as if he wants to share every sight and adventure before our honeymoon ends. As days go by, he becomes more anxious.

His feverish pace exhausts me. Fishing on the Marne, riding horses through the forest, climbing up to the treehouse he built as a child. And in the evenings, his energy unabated, he plays his violin and reads me passages from the trunk of books he brought with us, wanting to discuss them, while my eyelids flutter with fatigue. When I cannot articulate another thought, he takes me to bed for much needed sleep. But, not yet. His hands play my body as he has the violin, bringing me to crescendo after crescendo. That sounds trite, but that is how it feels, a maestro playing his instrument. Afterward, I fall into a dead sleep, bright glimpses of our honeymoon days flitting through my dreams.

When I wake, he is gone—leaving me quite alone.

***

Near the end of August, he wakes me before dawn, eyes dancing. “Get dressed. I have a surprise for you.”

Finally, I’ll discover what he’s been doing. I pull on a marigold print dress Lizzette designed to flatter my figure, though, with all the midnight dinners, the waist pinches something terrible.

As our buggy rumbles down the backroad, a blazing fire bursts from a fallow field, pumping hot air into an expanding oval sphere.

“What is that, François?” I ask, thrilled and frightened. Men struggle to hold the sphere over the raging fire.

“Hot air balloon.” The fire flickers on his cheekbones, sparks his eyes, exposing a new confidence I have not seen. “I piloted the surveillance balloon at the Battle of Fleurus.”

Dark and tragic, he keeps his military years locked away, yet this beautiful symbol of hope emerges before dawn.

The men greet me bashfully, and François interlaces his fingers, making a step for me. “Climb in.” I raise my skirted leg and jump into the basket. He climbs in after me, lifting sandbags off the floor and tossing them overboard.

The men let out the teethers, and the basket rocks as it lifts off. François feeds the furnace with new logs, hot air blasting. As the balloon climbs, the men below appear smaller and smaller. François wraps his arms around me from behind as we rise into the lavender sky, stars blinking. Between blasts of the furnace, it is silent.

A star shoots across the dawning sky, leaving a glorious trail. François reaches up to catch it like a firefly.

I clap my hands. “Did you make a wish?”

He releases his catch into my palms. “The wish is yours. Use it wisely.” The sun crests the mountain and lights his spectral eyes like a kaleidoscope.

“I’ll save it for something special.” Leaning against the basket, I gaze at rows and rows of lush red and gold leaves covering the hills like a patchwork quilt. Vendangeurs are already harvesting grape clusters off the vines with small knives, then tossing them in baskets. When they’re full, children carry them to a wagon, where a tall woman inspects their load.

“The vendangeurs are mostly women,” I say.

François grimaces. “The vineyards would have gone to waste if women hadn’t taken over when their men were conscripted.”

Aromas permeate my senses: fertile earth, spring water, sunshine, ripe grapes, the smells Grand-mère shared with me in the crayère. Smells of Le Nez. The life I was meant for.

The vendangeurs wave their hats.

“They know you?” I say.

“I’ve been picking grapes with them.” He smiles and waves.

“In the mornings? With all these women?”

“Guilty as charged.” He pecks my cheek with a kiss. “I thought I better introduce you before we go home.” He tamps down the furnace, and the balloon descends. We land with a clunk, then drag in the dirt. The vendangeurs run to catch the balloon and tie the ropes to the wagon. François jumps out and helps me down.

A little shaky on solid ground, I pick a few grapes and pop them in my mouth. “Better hurry picking, or these grapes will spoil.”

“You’re an expert already?” François laughs.

The tall woman on the wagon samples grapes from each basket. “She’s right, François.” She turns to the vendangeurs. “We have to move faster. The pinot noir is turning to raisins.” Her skin is tanned and wrinkled, a kerchief on her head. “Are you a vigneron?” she asks me.

“No, but my Grand-mère was a Ruinart and trained me.”

“Your wife has a pedigree, François.” She taps the side of her nose, then jumps down from the wagon in a cloud of orange dust.

“Veuve Demers, this is my wife, Madame Clicquot,” François introduces us.

Veuve. Widow.

“Please, call me Barbe-Nicole.” I extend my hand, and she wipes hers on her skirt before shaking mine.

“Veuve Demers manages the vineyards and provides juice for Fourneaux to make our wine,” François says.

“Fourneaux likes to tell me I picked the grapes too early or too late.” She scoffs and shades her eyes. “We’re starting to crush the grapes over there under the big oak if you want to see.”

We follow her to the knoll, and François squeezes my hand, so happy. Workers sort through the grapes to toss away stems, chaff, and moldy clusters to the ground while squirrels carry them off.

“Why do they waste so many?” I ask.

“They toss grapes that are too ripe, broken, sunburned, or moldy,” François answers.

“You were always a good apprentice,” Veuve Demers says.

“I never missed a harvest until the war,” he tells me.

Women pour the best grapes into a barrel press as tall as I am. Next, they screw down the top of the grape press until it crushes the grapes and juice flows through the slats.

“Gentle, now,” Veuve Demers instructs. “We don’t want to crush the seeds and stems.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“The tannins in seeds and stems taste too strong,” François says.

“First and second pressings are ideal for champagne,” Veuve Demers says. “But Fourneaux insists on third and fourth pressings. He wants to squeeze out all the juice he can get.”

“No wonder his wines are harsh as tobacco,” François says.

“I’ll miss you when you go back to Reims.” The widow pats his shoulder.

We sort grapes until noon, then the workers spread blankets under the oak trees and take out baskets of bread, cheese, and wine. Laughter rings over the vineyard. I never want to leave this idyllic place.

The widow cuts cheese while François opens champagne with an expert pfffft. He offers me a coupe of rusty-colored fizz, a whiff of jasmine and peaches. The taste is even sweeter, appealing to my sweet tooth.

“What makes your champagne so delicious?” I ask.

She pats the ground with her hand. “The earth. Where the grapes grow. We call it Terroir.”

“But all grapes grow in the ground.”

She sifts dirt through her fingers. “Ah, but is the soil chalky or volcanic? What grew there in the past? Did an ancient river run through it? What direction does the wind blow? Does it get cold at night? Do clouds shield the sun, or does it blister down on them?” Her craggy voice and wisdom remind me of Grand-mère.

“All that goes into the taste of wine?” François asks.

“All that, and you can still have bad wine.” She taps her nose. “You have to have a nose for wine. The blending of grape varietals, different vintage years, and vineyard locations make the best wine.” She brushes off her skirt and stands. “I have to take the fresh juice in the cellar.”

François jumps to his feet. “Can we help?”

She holds up her palm, her smile wistful. “Enjoy your honeymoon. Any of us would treasure one more afternoon with our spouse.” She wags her finger. “And when you see Fourneaux, don’t tell him my wine is better than his, or I’ll have hell to pay.” She leaves.

“I wanted to ask how she became a vigneron,” I say.

“Her husband was a royal tax collector guillotined in the Reign of Terror. Veuve Demers was left penniless and came to work in our vineyards. She worked hard, learned a great deal, and when the men went to war, Philippe helped her become a vigneron.”

“Generous of him.”

François huffs. “Philippe can be very generous, as long as he’s in charge.” He lays back on the ground.

Lying next to him, I gaze up at the oak canopy. “What do you mean?”

“He’s making me a partner in the wool business to keep me under his thumb,” he spits out the words.

“I’d be overjoyed if my father made me a partner.”

He props himself on his elbow. “You’re taking Philippe’s side?”

“I’m always on your side. I’m just saying if your father wants to make you a partner, it means he believes in you.”

He scoffs. “Philippe thinks I’m weak. He can control me in the wool business,” he grumbles, staring out at the vineyards.

My sinuses sting with an epiphany. “I know what to do with my wish. If your father wants to make you partner, have him make you partner in the wine business.”

He wrinkles his nose. “It’s just a hobby for him.”

“Exactly,” I say. “So, he’ll be willing to let you have a go at it.”

His fingertips stroke his mustache; his nails are no longer gnawed and bleeding. “Ever since I was a child, Philippe watched me too closely, waiting for me to make a mistake so he could fix it. I’m a failure in his eyes.”

I scratch his palm. “We can’t let our parent’s beliefs mold us, François. We can be who we desire to be. We proved that getting married.”

A spark of hope brightens his face, but self-doubt snuffs it. “Philippe is stubborn when he gets something in his head.”

“As stubborn as your wife?” I lift his chin, grinning. “Perhaps he’ll see you in a new light now that you’re married.”

***

SECOND COALITION WAR

(1798–1802) Great Britain, Austria, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Portugal,

Naples, Germany, and Sweden join together to fight General Bonaparte’s expansion of French territories. Napoleon’s Grande Armée trounced the Austrians in Italy and the Mamluk Cavalry at the Battle of the Pyramids in Egypt, defeating the second coalition. Then, he returned to Paris

to overthrow le Directoire, appointing himself First Consul.

“The veil is torn…It is sad when one heart is torn by such conflicting feelings for one person.

I need to be alone. I am tired of grandeur; all my feelings have dried up. I no longer care about my glory.

At twenty-nine, I have exhausted everything.”

–Napoleon Bonaparte upon learning of Josephine’s infidelity.

The Red Man enters Napoleon’s blue-and-white-striped battlefield tent as if there’s no need to announce himself. “I brought a book for your library.”

Napoleon cracks open the binding. Ah, new ink, his favorite smell since his father sent him to the military academy. This smell comforted him when other cadets poked fun at his Italian accent, small stature, and large nose. He devoured every book in the library: biographies of rulers, history, geography, science, religion, philosophy. Novels like Candide, Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe.

As Napoleon thumbs through the pages, he’s struck dumb. His correspondence with Josephine has been intercepted and distributed by the British government for the world to read. Disgrace and horror sting his eyes. The letters confirm Josephine’s many affairs if he had not already known in his heart-of-hearts.

The Red Man leers with those split and peeling lips. “That woman has made you the laughingstock of Europe.”

“Power is my mistress.” Napoleon throws the book in the woodstove. “I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.”

The Red Man picks up the Koran, which Napoleon had been reading, one of a hundred books he’s studied about Egypt. “It is unwise to know one’s enemy too well before slaying them. It takes away your appetite for their blood.”

“There are two forces in the world,” Napoleon counters. “The sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit. I need to study my enemy’s spirit to know what moves them.”

The Red Man scoffs. “The Egyptians worship Mohammed. They have no need of spirit from a Franco conqueror.”

Napoleon raises his arms and bows at the waist. “Praise be to Allah.”

“That’s your plan? Worship their God, and they’ll bow to you?”

“I plan to defeat their enemy, the Mamluks,” Napoleon says. “Then, the Egyptians will welcome me with open arms.” He bows reverently. “Glory be to Allah. I’ll give the Egyptians a postal system, streetlights, a mint for their money, lower taxes for the peasants.” He bows. “Honor be to Allah. I will build hospitals, print books in their language, sponsor their pagan festivals. Praise be to Allah.” A final bow.

“You’re converting to Islam?” The Red Man’s glare bores into his soul.

“Fighting is a soldier’s only religion,” Napoleon says. “But it has proven useful to adopt the religion of the country I wish to conquer.”

“Then, praise be to Allah!” The Red Man throws back his ugly head and roars with laughter.

***

11

Ce gars ne joue pas selon les mêmes règles que vous me croyez.

This guy does not play by the same rules as you, believe me.

Lizzette left Bouzy in early August to visit her cousin in Prussia. From there, she’d travel back to Reims to open up our new house on Rue Hospital, with her very own cottage behind the carriage house. I don’t know if I’m more excited for her or us. The cottage is the first home she’ll have for herself, she told me through uncharacteristic tears. As soon as we saw the stucco and brick home backed up to the grapevine labyrinth, we had to have it. The steep-pitched roof was charming, but the library was the final deciding factor, with built-in beechwood bookshelves we’d spend a lifetime filling.

But even with our new house to look forward to, we can’t seem to tear ourselves away from our farmhouse in Bouzy. We linger as long as we can after the harvest until all the juice is in barrels, and we have no excuse to stay.

We drive our wagon through the harvested grapevines, their out-stretched arms bereft without leaves and grapes. François doesn’t speak, his expression dull, his eyes shuttered, a brooding mood I’ve seen before.

I lay my hand on his knee. “Remember our plan to take over the wine business. Your father will think it’s a splendid idea.”

“Not if it isn’t his idea.”

“Then we’ll make it his idea.”

At Clicquot Manor, we’re about to open the front door before I remember I left my purse on the seat. “I’ll meet you inside.”

But the groom has already driven our wagon around to the carriage house, parked next to a most imposing red and black carriage gilded in gold leaf. The magnificently gaudy rig draws me closer. Strange gold creatures with crocodile heads, hippopotamus haunches, and clawed lion paws guard the front. There’s an overpowering odor as I approach, sweet and metallic. The sweetness turns cloying and putrid, like the stench of guillotined heads speared and displayed during the Reign of Terror. Not the sudden smell of death, but the slow rotting that lingers long afterward.

The coachman atop the carriage leers at me with eyes deep and black as holes. The stench comes from him. His skin is red and irritated, not from the sun, but from some disease or explosion that mutilated him. His hands spider with broken blood vessels, his thick nails gnarl like claws. Strangely, he wears a red silk top hat and a red velveteen driving suit with an inverted pentacle embroidered on the breast pocket. My hackles bristle when he smiles, dazzling white teeth against raw lips.

I grab my purse from our wagon. His disgusting odor makes me sneeze violently. Turning on my boot heel, I walk around to the front door as fast as my feet will carry me, sneezing and sneezing until my nose bleeds.

***

My eyes still water from the coachman’s stench when I slip in the door of the grand hall, not wanting to interrupt the small group at the far end listening to Papa speak.

François stands between Philippe and Fourneaux, slipping into his old behavior like a comfortable robe. I don’t recognize the statuesque woman and small man standing by Papa as he proudly unveils a painting of General Napoleon Bonaparte with his face lit like a saint, commanding and fearsome on his rearing horse.

The man watching Papa wears a blue military jacket. Gold-fringed epaulets, six brass buttons down each side. A bronze medal hangs around his neck on a thick blue ribbon, just like in the painting. With a start, I realize he is Napoleon Bonaparte himself, the general who just threw out le Directoire and named himself First Consul. His brilliant coup d’état was shouted from every street corner by eager newsboys. How disappointing that the flesh does not live up to the legend.

The slender woman beside him must be the scandalous Josephine Bonaparte about whom my maman gossips.

Papa recites a poem he wrote, his voice rising and falling dramatically. He should have been an actor, my father: the loyal Royalist, the protective employer, the revolutionary Jacobin, and now entertaining Napoleon as if he hadn’t just overthrown the government.

“Italy, I conquered with a thousand fires.

Africa, Syria, astounding the universe, I conquered one by one.

Like a thunderbolt, I crossed the mountains

Seas, rivers, and rocks,

Through burning heat and winter cold.

Troops and battles all ceded to my courage.

I gave France back her rights,

Now it only remains for me to conquer England.”

Napoleon knocks his heart with his fist, and Papa’s cheeks flush. His flattering poetry worked its magic.

A sneeze springs to my nose, and I barely grab my handkerchief when another follows.

Philippe holds out his arm. “Ah, there you are, my new daughter-in-law. Barbe-Nicole, come meet the Bonapartes.”

Stuffing my handkerchief in my purse, I wish I’d worn something better than a traveling dress to meet the leader of France and his wife. At least I’m wearing my Tyrolean boots, painted so gaily.

Papa greets me with kisses on both cheeks and whispers. “Did a bee sting your nose?”

“Wonderful to see you, too,” I say as we walk to the group.

Josephine Bonaparte is tall and willowy with a swan-like neck and smooth olive skin. Her scent of roses soothes my irritated nose. A sheer chemise falls low on her breasts. Her naked feet are clad in sandals, revealing a gold ring on her long second toe like the Goddess of Liberty herself.

The couple is exquisitely mismatched. Napoleon stands just to her shoulder but exudes a powerful presence. Is it the throb of his pulse under his jaw? His penetrating gaze? No. His nostrils quiver and move, tracking every nuance in the room, the fears, the hopes, the anxieties of each person he meets. Perhaps, he too is Le Nez. Wouldn’t that be a curious coincidence?

Papa introduces me, then shows off Napoleon’s uniform. “First Consul Bonaparte just approved the designs of the new Grande Armée uniforms. Aren’t they stunning, mon chou?”

The General’s sleeves hang to his fingernails as if he is wearing his father’s jacket.

“Exquisite detail,” I say, “Though, I’d like to bring over my seamstress to tailor the General’s jacket to perfection.”

François takes my meaning and whispers to a butler who backs out the door.

“You are to be congratulated on your nuptials,” Madame Bonaparte says in her lilting accent.

“Yes, well done.” Napoleon nods at François. “A woman is a wonderful gift for a man if she can bear him children.”

His assertion irks me. “Surely, childbearing is not women’s only value.” I feel hot, unbearable hot.

“Take it as a compliment, Madame Clicquot.” Napoleon’s nose hairs bristle. “Bearing children is the one thing men cannot do for themselves.”

Papa signals me to stop, but injustice throbs between my brows.

“Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights,” I quote, perspiration springing from my forehead.

“The rantings of Olympe de Gouges,” he says. “She was guillotined for them.”

“Then you do not support equal rights for women?” My pulse thumps in my throat, my heart races. Signals that my monthly flowers is upon me.

“You women whine about equal rights, but could you really fight our wars?” He clenches his fist.

Josephine unfolds that fist and kisses his palm with a passion I don’t understand. “I’m sure my husband will grant fair consideration to women when his Napoleon Code is finished.” She canoodles his hand again and he’s spellbound, a python mesmerized by the snake charmer.

I try to recall Maman’s gossip about this enchantress. Before Napoleon, she was known as Rose de Beauharnais and was imprisoned in the Revolution with her husband. A Viscount, I think? He was guillotined with thousands of aristocrats, but Rose survived. I can’t imagine how she survived Bastille prison, the rotting sewage, hungry rats, infection, and fever that killed prisoners waiting for the guillotine. Maman said when the Reign of Terror ended, Josephine used her feminine wiles to climb the social circles, seducing powerful military officers. When she met the younger, ambitious General Bonaparte, she played with his affections, stirring him to a proposal. When they married, he changed her name from Rose to Josephine.

Napoleon turns a penetrating gaze on François. “I’ve been trying to place where I met you before. You were at the Siege of Toulon, weren’t you?”

François presses his hand on his collarbones. “Yes, sir, I was a Fusilier.”

Napoleon points at him. “I knew it. You dragged me to shelter after a British soldier stabbed me. I tried to find you later, but there was chaos and confusion after the arsenal exploded. Where did you go?”

François hesitates, silence dragging. Finally, he swallows hard. “We were ordered to execute the remaining royalists.” He chokes out the words. “Seven. Hundred. Frenchmen.”

His anguish smells as toxic as wool-dyeing fumes. François only confessed one killing to me. Now I hear there were more. Hundreds more murdered souls marching through his conscience. His admission sends my head reeling, trying to make sense of what he did. Granted, he was ordered to kill, but does that justify blood on his hands?

“They were enemies, François,” Napoleon says. “Royalist enemies who stood in the way of liberty, equality, fraternity. You must remember what we are fighting for.” He takes off the bronze medal and drapes it around François’s neck. “I owe you a debt of gratitude for saving my life.”

The men gasp at the honor, but my stomach lurches. François is receiving a medal but at what cost? I’ve experienced his nightmares, waking up with cold sweats, screaming. His actions haunt him, nearly lost his sanity, all for the glory of the revolution?

François examines the bronze disk emblazoned with Napoleon’s head. “I don’t deserve an award, General. I was running from a bomb when I stumbled over you.”

His honesty squeezes my heart.

François starts to take the medal off.

“Keep it.” Napoleon presses the medal to François’s chest. “We become strong by defying defeat and by turning loss and failure into success.”

François sighs roughly, expelling the odor of shame.

My head spins, and my stomach pinches painfully. Finally, I think my monthly flowers is coming.

“Shall we carry on in the salon?” Papa says. “We’re serving tea, and I am famished.”

Feeling unsteady as we follow him through the double doors, Josephine takes my arm as if we are old friends. “You look flushed. Perhaps you’d like to use my fan.” She offers her flamingo feather fan.

“Just a little dizzy.” I excuse myself, but though the cramps continue, there is no sign of flowers.

***

When I return, Napoleon has taken the Louis XVI chair upholstered in peacock blue.

Fourneaux struggles to remove the cork on the champagne.

“I don’t suppose there was much champagne in Egypt when you were there,” Papa says.

“On the contrary,” Napoleon says. “I went through wagonloads of Moet champagne entertaining sheiks on the Nile. They could not drink enough of the delicious nectar.”

“You took Moet champagne to Egypt?” Philippe asks. “Jean-Remy Moet is our neighbor in Epernay.”

“Jean-Remy and I became friends at Royal Military School.” Napoleon tucks his hand in his vest. “Ever since then, I’ve used Champagne country as my anchorage away from the horror of bloody battlefields.”

“Bloody battlefields,” François blurts, followed by a stream of cackles, snorts, and hoots. His panicked eyes seek mine, pleading for help.

Philippe pats his son’s back, and François sets off another round of hysteria.

Josephine hides behind her flamingo feather fan.

Pouring water from the pitcher, I make François drink it.

Napoleon seems unfazed. “We must laugh at a man to avoid crying for him,” he says. François downs more water.

The servants stand against the wall, paralyzed by disgrace. I clap my hands to distract attention from François. “Please serve our First Consul first.”

Napoleon’s nostrils quiver in disgust at the trays. “I only eat roast chicken.”

“Pardon me. We didn’t know.” Philippe’s scruffy eyebrows crinkle.

“What an exquisite spread.” Josephine points her snake-ringed finger at each delicacy as a servant prepares her plate. Pate and quince. Petit fours, sugared plums, and dates. Pastries. Cornichons, olives and runny brie.

Suddenly, I’m ravenous and craving the strangest combinations. “I wonder how dill cornichons taste with petit fours?” I grin at Josephine and pop the pair in my mouth.

“Our finest Clicquot-Muiron,” Fourneaux says, offering a silver tray of bubbling coupes.

Napoleon stands, raises his glass. “In victory, you deserve champagne. In defeat, you need it.” His gaze seeks out each one of us, sealing our allegiance. It’s a relief when he’s finished, and we can drink.

But the Clicquot champagne smells like dirty socks. It takes everything I can do not to gag.

Napoleon spits it out. Josephine bites into a madeleine. Papa clamps his lips together. François blurts a laugh, then gulps, squelching his hysteria.

“The champagne is corked,” I tell him. “Can you open another bottle?”

François holds his breath and busies himself at the ice bucket.

Fourneaux sniffs his murky glass. “I don’t smell anything.”

“But my wife does.” François pushes the cork out with an expert sigh. “She has a nose for good wine.” He brings me the bottle to smell before he pours.

Napoleon reaches to stroke Josephine’s cheek. “Yes, the finer sex has powers men can’t begin to fathom.”

“The second bottle is not corked,” I say, my cheeks heating. I’d forgotten Clicquot-Muiron was so sour since we’d tasted such good champagne in the country. Rising to help François, I discreetly drop a lump of sugar into each coupe before serving.

“You are on the right track adding sugar,” Napoleon says. “But it needs to be early in the fermentation to boost the yeast.”

“You put sugar in my champagne?” Fourneaux frowns.

“You must read the work of my Minister of the Interior, Jean-Antoine Chaptal,” Napoleon says, accepting a second glass. “His techniques could transform this sour mess into a drinkable wine.”

“We can’t wait to read it,” I say. “My husband and I take great interest in wine.”

“French wine is coveted by all of Europe. It may be our greatest secret weapon.” Napoleon raises his glass and toasts, “Á la victoire.”

“à la victoire,” everyone toasts. Except Fourneaux, who squints at the sugar in his coupe.

Papa turns to Napoleon. “I understand you’ve put an end to the royalist rebellion since you’ve become First Consul.”

He scoffs. “There are still royalist spies among us. My scouts located Louis XVIII holed up in Warsaw, attended by a hundred French courtiers.”

“The Prussian queen supports him?” François asks.

“Along with every monarchy in Europe,” Napoleon says. “They think if they restore Louis XVIII to the French throne, everything will go back to their feudal ways. But I will fight for the people until we are victorious.”

“Here, here.” Papa drinks his champagne. “If you don’t mind me asking, First Consul, what do you make of newspapers who claim your Napoleon Code will uproot French law?”

“Newspapers are ignorant.” He stands next to Josephine’s chair. “Nobility and class privileges will be extinguished. Men will have freedom of person, freedom of contract, and the ability to own private property. The Napoleon Code establishes all men equal under the law.”

“Men are equal, but what about women’s rights?” I say.

Papa drags his finger across his neck.

“A loyal woman who serves her husband well will always be taken care of by him.” Napoleon grips his wife’s shoulders. “Of course, it’s her responsibility to provide a son to continue her husband’s legacy.”

Josephine’s head shakes imperceptibly, warning me to stop my objections. She’s made her devil’s bargain and will live with it.

Philippe claps twice. “Hear that, children? A son is the first piece of business to complete in a new marriage.”

“A rather enjoyable task, isn’t it, the business of making children?” Papa’s eyes crinkle. “The French would not be French without it.” The men laugh.

Lizzette appears with her sewing basket. “Did you call for me, Madame Clicquot?” The first time she’s used my married name.

“Ah yes, Lizzette.” I lead her and the First Consul to the Cheval mirror. She marks chalk six inches higher on his sleeve.

As she makes the alterations, Papa questions Bonaparte in great detail about his plans for France. Papa’s enthusiasm confuses me since he dedicated his career to Louis XVI and even built our home, Hotel Ponsardin, for the king’s coronation.

Walking back to Josephine, I glance out the window and see the red coachman leaning against the ostentatious carriage, taking a swig from a gold flask. As if my gaze alerts him, he glares up at me, the pits of his eyes lost in shadow. Startled, I walk away and join Josephine.

“Our coachman is bizarre, isn’t he?” Her long fingers shield her stained teeth.

I reach for a madeleine to soothe my growing nausea. “Is something wrong with him?”

“The red devil makes my skin crawl.” Josephine cringes. “Napoleon refuses to get rid of him.” She bites into a jellied pastry. “On a happier subject, when is your baby due?”

“I beg your pardon?” I hold my stomach. “Oh, no, Madame. This belly comes from too much fun on our honeymoon.”

“Your cheeks are flushed. You’re dizzy and nauseous.” She flutters her flamingo fan at me. “You paired a cornichon with a petit-four. Trust me. You are with child.”

One hand on my quaking belly, the other reaches for another madeleine, my fifth, but who’s counting? I try to recall my last flowers. Not since before our wedding. Now it all makes sense. My indigestion, my backaches, my voracious appetite. A baby? Just when we plan to start a business? What will François say?

The men return with Napoleon’s sleeves at the proper length.

Philippe brings him a contract to sign before releasing the uniforms. “You have given us the great honor of serving our country with the Grande Armée uniforms.”

Napoleon reads the contract, then tosses it back. “I thought you were patriots.”

Fourneaux throws up his hands. “Of course, First Consul. That’s why we cut our prices and gave you the finest wool.”

“This contract requires payment upon delivery,” Napoleon says. “That’s impossible right now since we’ve changed leadership.” He glares at Papa. “France deserves your support. You’ll be paid by the treasury when we receive plunder from my conquests in Egypt and Italy.”

“Understandable,” Philippe says. “We’re happy to hold the uniforms until such time.”

“You insult me.” Napoleon stands. “Cancel the order.”

“But the uniforms are finished and packed on the wagons,” Papa says.

“Josephine?” Napoleon presents his arm. She rises, and they walk out.

After misleading Fourneaux into this uniform contract, I feel responsible for the hundreds of useless uniforms and even more in the making. Worst of all, our employees will be out of work.

“We can’t let them leave.” Grabbing the contract, I run down the stairs, hearing the others behind me.

***

Dizzy and out of breath, I run out into the glaring sun, waving my arms. The grotesque carriage pulls out from the carriage house. Napoleon bangs his scabbard on the driver’s bench to signal him to stop. The red coachman makes a hideous face and releases a noxious stench that makes me double over, holding my knees.

“What’s wrong, Barbe-Nicole?” François grabs my waist.

Napoleon steps out, imperious but curious. Josephine peers through the carriage door. The partners cower under the portico—my belly reels, about to lose its contents at Napoleon’s feet.

“Out with it. I don’t have all day,” he says.

François takes the contract from me and rips it in two. “You said you wanted to pay me back for saving your life. You may do so by taking the uniforms. We will trust you to pay us when the treasury is in order.”

The partners gasp.

Napoleon tilts his head in consideration, then nods curtly. “Gentlemen, take a lesson from this young man. He saved your contract, your reputation, and possibly your lives.” He claps François’s shoulder. “I could use a man like you as my aide-de-camp.”

“I need him with me.” I take François’s arm.

Josephine smiles slyly. “Give him a son, dear. Your future will be secure if you give him a son.”

Her words burble in my ears as if I’m drowning. François steps away, staring at me in utter disbelief.

“I had no idea until today, François. You have to believe me.” My words sound as hollow as his heels clicking on the marble steps of Clicquot Manor as he retreats. Cradling my gurgling stomach, I chase after him. He has to understand a baby will not change anything between us. Who am I trying to fool? A baby changes everything.

***

12

Il n’y pas plus sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre.

No one is as deaf as the one who does not listen.

For the next week, I try to talk to François about our coming child, but he won’t discuss it. Instead, playing an agitating tune on his violin, over and over until it sets my teeth on edge.

The chaotic song is in stark contrast to the cheerful Trobairitz song Lizzette sings as she readies the nursery in our new home. I pray her joy will rub off on François, but he leaves one afternoon without saying goodbye. I sleep alone, the crumpled sheets a fallow field in the moonlight.

“Don’t worry, Barbe-Nicole. He’ll get used to the idea,” Lizzette says when she brings me a chocolate croissant in the morning. “Men are spoiled little boys when they think they have to share your attention.”

“I don’t want to share his attention, either.” I take a bite of croissant while Lizzette plaits my hair which has grown to my waist. “It was perfect, just the two of us.”

“Qui n’avance pas, recule,” she says in her native Occitaine tongue from her Trobairitz heritage.

“Those who don’t move forward, move backward?” I guess her meaning.

Lizzette tweaks my nose, her wayward eye-rolling. “Oui.”

“Qui n’avance pas, recule,” I repeat as she finishes the braid. “I’m going to find François and bring him home.”

***

When I get to Clicquot Manor, Philippe greets me with a grim nod, his eyelids purple and puffy behind his spectacles. He says François hasn’t come out of his room since he arrived.

Catherine-Françoise is in a wheelchair knitting the softest wool, a baby bootie dangling from her busy needles.

“Oh, God bless you, my dear,” she says, smelling of laudanum, her eyes over-bright and twitchy. “You have brought us a grandchild. A child to bless our family.” She brings my hand to her mouth—a kiss from the woman who slapped me at our wedding.

“I’m afraid your son doesn’t feel this way,” I say.

She hums and knits, her needles clicking. Knitted gowns, booties, and caps blanket the floor, enough for an orphanage.

Philippe pulls me into the hallway. “News of the baby set her off. She hasn’t slept since she heard.” Lifting his spectacles, he rubs his eyes. “François says he won’t pass this curse on to a child.”

“What curse?” I say defensively.

“I should have warned you before you got married, but I didn’t have the heart.” His bottom lip pushes up. “Doctor Bonet identified her condition as Manico-Melancholicus. Not only melancholia but alternating with mania. Symptoms pass between family members.”

“I had no idea,” I say, though of course, I’ve known François is moody. “Is there a cure?”

He shakes his head. “Lithium salts in a hot bath helps.” He looks in on his wife. She ties off the yarn of a bootie, whistling the Bastille Day song of independence.

“How long will her happy mood last?” I say.

“Weeks? Maybe longer? I have spent a lifetime hiding them safely out of the public eye, so they don’t lock them away.”

Seeing my father-in-law this way humbles and terrifies me, each crevice of his face earned by keeping his son and wife out of cruel asylums that hide the insane from the rest of us.

“I hate to say it, but François is right.” Philippe’s eyes water. “You didn’t bargain for this. We can annul the marriage now, and your reputation will be intact.”

A whirlwind of chaos and confusion whisks me up within its funnel. A bitter odor oozes from my pores. What do I fear more? François’s madness or losing him entirely? The one person I yearned for is about to be torn from me if I don’t do something. Grabbing the tastevin around my neck, I yank it side to side.

“Could our child inherit the disease?” I ask.

“Scientists aren’t certain, but you shouldn’t risk it.” He gazes back at his wife with concern. “I know an herbalist who can mix a concoction to ‘bring down the flowers.’”

“Are you suggesting I get rid of the baby?” A burning surges from my belly to my sinuses, forcing hot tears in my eyes. “First, you want to annul our marriage, and now you want to destroy our child? What kind of father are you?” The tastevin chain cuts into my neck. “Why didn’t you say something sooner, Philippe? Why didn’t you stop us?”

His head leans to his bony shoulder as if it’s too heavy to hold up. “François was happy for the first time in his life. So happy, I thought he was cured. I’m sure he thought so himself.”

My thumb rubs the anchor on the tastevin. Clarity and courage. Never did I need them more as I climb the stairs to François’s room.

He refuses to let me in. Every day I try again, but my heart sinks lower as our child grows. I worry about what he will become if his father won’t be part of our lives.

***

Climbing the stairs to François’s room with no lantern, only my nose leads the way. His springtime smell has gone sour; puddles turned putrid with decay. I knock on the last door on the right and wait.

I try the latch, but, as usual, it’s locked.

“François, I’m here. I came to bring you home with me.” I try a new tactic to unlock his stubbornness.

Silence.

“Can we talk at least?” I hear a rustle; the smell is dreadful and strong.

“Philippe said he talked to you about an annulment,” he says through the door. “Take it and get on with your life.”

A jab in my abdomen. The thrust of new life. Our child. “You cannot leave me just as we’re starting a family. I need you, Tadpole.” My finger traces the woodgrain in the door. “You think I don’t know you by now? We vowed to love each other despite our quirks.”

He hoots. “You’re the one with quirks: stubborn, out-spoken, headstrong. Insanity is not a quirk.”

How do I counter that? François accepts his diagnosis, and who am I to refute it? I have never felt the black cloak that smothers him.

Finally, I hear rustling, and my heart leaps to my throat. Then, a key in the lock, and the door opens. The stink of his despair hits me, the bitter smell of self-hatred and defeat. The heavy drapery is closed, the bed untouched, a blanket on the floor. He’s wearing the same clothes as weeks ago when he left. His face is shadowed with growth, his hair greasy and gnarled.

I’m horrified to see him this way, a prisoner of his mind. He steps closer, and I force myself to stand firm; his smell is so foul.

“It was your quirks,” he says. “Nitpicky, stubborn, foolhardy…the quirks born of my beautiful Le Nez that made me believe I could live a real life.” He reaches out and strokes my nose, then drops his hand to his side. “What an idiot I was to think you could change my curse. I can’t beat it. It is me. I lied to you, Barbe-Nicole, and I lied to myself.”

“Is it a lie to be happy? We are happy together. And I refuse to see that as a lie.”

“I can’t hide it from you any longer.” His chin quivers. “You don’t know what it’s like, lying on the floor, unable to move, unable to open my eyelids, feeling like a worm baked in clay.”

“You don’t have to hide. I love all of you.”

He buries his face in his hands. “I can’t submit you to the hell Philippe endures. Our child may be...”

“Our child will be loved. Oh!” A kick from the inside, and I put his hands on my abdomen.

He strokes my belly with such tenderness. I kiss his neck as he explores. Slowly, his hands move around to my lower back, rubbing out tension I didn’t know was there.

“Just come home, François. That’s all I ask,” I whisper, trying not to awaken his demons.

He backs away. “I don’t know.”

Reaching for his hand, I scratch his palm. “Come with me.”

***

“I wanted to let you know François is back home,” I tell Papa, finding him on his hands and knees, slathering mortar on a tile. He works on this wing of Hotel Ponsardin whenever he can steal away from Ponsardin Woolens and his political responsibilities.

“I knew he’d come around; a man needs an heir.” He fits the tile snugly in place. “And how are you feeling?”

“Besides my ferocious appetite?” I laugh, but he focuses on the errant bubble of his carpenter’s level. He pulls up the tile he just laid with an angry snort, adds mortar to a corner, and presses down until it is even. His jaw juts to the side as it does when he’s worried.

“Something is wrong,” I venture.

“What could be wrong when I have my first grandchild on the way?” His swift smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

“You always retreat to this room when you want to hide.” I gesture to the vast wing he’s never finished. I have to admire that he toils on his own grand mistake in private.

“You’ve always seen through me.” He wipes his dusty brow with the back of his hand. “If you must know, an innocent girl was killed by a bomb meant for Napoleon.” He squats on his haunches. “A fourteen-year-old named Marianne Peusol. She sold baked goods on rue du Bac.” His chin drops to his chest.

“Oh, Papa.” I grasp his hand. “How terrible. Was Napoleon hurt?”

“Only his sense of immortality.” His unshaven jaw shifts, grinding his front teeth together. “Apparently, the red coachman smelled a trap when he drove Napoleon to the opera house. Sending his carriage ahead as a decoy, the red coachman drove the First Consul in a rig on backroads.” He presses his palms together. “Royalists bombed Napoleon’s carriage. Little Marianne was standing on the corner, selling croissants.”

“You read all this in the newspapers?”

He chucks his chin at papers on the bench. “If they arrest me, at least you know why. Look after your Maman.”

The top letter bears the royal seal of Louis XVIII.

“General Bonaparte,

You must have long known that you have earned my esteem. If you ever doubted my gratitude when I take the throne again, you may be assured that you will be allowed to choose your own place and decide the fate of your friends. As for my principles, I am a Frenchman: merciful by nature, I shall be all the more so by reason. However, you are wasting precious time; we can ensure the peace of France. I say “we” because I need you, Napoleon Bonaparte, for that. And, you cannot do it without me.

General Bonaparte, Europe is watching you, glory awaits you, and I am impatient to restore peace to my people.

-The King of France, Louis XVIII

Papa spreads mortar on another tile. The spidery penmanship on the next letter reminds me of François’s.

Sir Louis XVIII,

I received your letter. I thank you for the kind things you write about me. You must not wish for your return to France. You would have to step upon 500,000 corpses.

Sacrifice your interest to the peace and happiness of France; history will remember it to your credit.

I am not indifferent to your family’s misfortunes. I will be happy to contribute to the comfort and tranquility of your retreat.

-Bonaparte

“Where did you get these letters?” I ask him.

“I’m the messenger.” He smiles wanly and slides a tile into place.

The baby kicks up at my diaphragm, and I flinch. “Papa, were you involved with the bombing?”

He sighs heavily. “Nothing I say will matter; both sides will look for a scapegoat. Napoleon will look for Royalists, and the King will think I rallied Jacobins to foil his plan. Either way, my carrots are cooked.”

“I’ll defend you, telling them we were here together all night and day.” I hand him the next tile.

“Go home to your family.” He kisses my nose in dismissal.

“Let them find a new messenger, Papa. It’s too dangerous.”

“I have one life to live. I have to make it stand for something.”

“That’s ironic coming from you. You usually choose whichever side is winning.”

His eyes crinkle. “Not a bad philosophy, oui?”

“Keep out of sight, Papa.” I push myself to a stand, girding my belly. “This baby needs a grand-père.”

***

When we meet with Philippe, he hugs François tight, the love between them profound.

“We have a proposal for you, Philippe. I gesture for François to continue.

“We want to take over Clicquot-Muiron Winery.” François stares at his untied boot laces.

“It’s only been a few weeks since your...” Philippe blanches. He clears his throat and changes course. “Clicquot-Muiron is not a business, really. The real money is in wool, and now that we have the armée as a client, you could--”

“We like wine,” I say, taking François’s hand.

“Yes, we love wine,” he says. “Especially champagne.”

“But we sell red wine, not champagne,” Philippe objects. “People prefer--”

“François is a great salesman,” I interrupt, holding Philippe’s gaze so he’ll understand my purpose. “And with my bookkeeping experience, I can manage the office. Of course, we’ll keep Fourneaux as the winemaker and Veuve Demers running the vineyards.”

“I see.” Philippe nods, my message sinking in. “A family business. That makes perfect sense. But, it is wiser to stick to something tried and true like wool. Something I can help with.”

François pulls his hair from the sides and shouts. “Why should I do something that makes me miserable? You can’t stand me to be a man, can you? You’d rather have me grovel in a cell, ashamed and despondent.” He stamps out the door.

Philippe shakes his head. “He’ll fail.”

“Then, let him fail,” I say. “If you want your son to thrive, you have to let him fail.” I run after François.

***

Philippe and François embark on a wine sales trip to Paris to visit established clients and announce the new name of the winery: Clicquot et Fils. Clicquot and son, no mention of me, but what would I expect? They’ll be home in two weeks, plenty of time for the birth of our son.

After they leave, I invite Maman and Clementine to our new home for afternoon tea. Lizzette makes all my favorites, and the house smells as heavenly as Angelina Patisserie. She even made millefeuille, a thousand layers of pastry, and sweet cream with a chocolate glaze.

I kiss Clementine’s cheeks, enjoying her delicate scent like the lily of the valley. She has grown into such a young lady, it’s a wonder Maman has not married her off.

Maman struts into my sunroom like a peacock showing off her feathery chartreuse dress. Stuffed hummingbirds cover the bald spots on her curlicued hair. She is not aging well, and her obsession with this green color does not help. Her gardenia perfume is so strong it blurs my vision. She sits by the window with the sun warming her green taffeta. Her odor worsens, smelling oddly of rotten garlic. But that cannot be, Maman hates garlic.

I stuff a madeleine or two in my mouth to ward off my queasiness.

Maman pokes her pastry with her fork, flaking it into small pieces she won’t eat in order to keep her lithe figure. Clementine follows her example. Their behavior causes me to eat with exaggerated gusto.

“You know, Barbe-Nicole, they call millefeuilles Napoleons now,” Maman says. “The thousand layers of pastry represent the Grande Armée.”

“Blasphemy.” I bite into my second millefeuille.

But her hideous smell and all the pastries I’ve eaten catch up to me. My stomach takes on a life of its own, pitching and heaving like ocean waves. A fist of pain thrusts down in my womb. Water gushes from my insides in a rushing torrent over the chair, soaking my muslin frock.

“Call for the carriage, Maman. Take me to the hospital.” I’ve planned a civilized hospital birth with a trained doctor, no midwife for me. “Hurry.” But another wave of pain pushes through my abdomen.

“Oh….Oh, dear Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” Maman prays, her face whiter than usual, peeling off the stars that hide her sores.

Clementine runs out and brings back Lizzette.

“Lizzette, the carriage.” I yowl with the shooting pain. “Now.”

She feels my abdomen as it buckles. “No time for the hospital. This baby is coming now.”

Maman drops to her knees, followed by Clementine. “Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” Maman rolls her emerald eyes toward heaven. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of death.”

Hour of death. One-in-twenty women die in childbirth, and I am certain I’m next.

***

Ropes tether my wrists and ankles; my knees splayed wide like the whores held in the stocks for righteous citizens to throw rocks. Torturous pain rides me like the Red Man, leering at me with his stone-cold eyes and decaying teeth.

Maman digs her fingernails into her cheeks, clawing bloody furrows. Her mouth opens wide, and she lets out an ear-splitting screech. Or is it me?

Another wave of pain pulls me under into his netherworld. The faltering gallop of the heartbeat hooves, the Red Man’s whip strikes deep until I whimper and beg. Whatever he wants, I will pay. He only laughs, driving my agony deeper into delirium.

When my eyes glimmer open, Doctor DuBois has taken the Red Man’s place. Light glances off his tiny round lenses like shooting stars.

Another thrust to my pelvis.

The pungent odor of ether pulls me under. BA-BOOM, ba-boom. BA-BOOM, ba-boom. Another thrust of pain. YEOWL. My knees draw up to my chin, hitting someone.

“Tie her restraints tighter,” he orders.

My consciousness hovers in the ceiling corner, watching Lizzette tighten the rags on my ankles and wrists. Clementine holds my hand. Maman sings a hymn I don’t recognize. Doctor DuBois sweats profusely since the Red Man lurks at his shoulder.

The animal inside me kicks at my bones like breaking icicles off roof eaves. The rags cut into my wrists. Maman’s song dissolves to whimpers.

My back arches, and I yowl. Clementine strokes my forehead with her soft fingertips while the doctor’s fist plunges into my womb, grabbing savagely for the rabid thing inside me. BA-BOOM, ba-boom…

He wrenches his fingers around the thing and pulls. But it will not come out. He twists and yanks again. BA-BOOM, ba-boom…the sound falters, then ceases.

Howling bursts my eardrums. My mouth opens, blaring. My insides heave and quake, drowning in agony as the thing wrestles to survive. Sweet Clementine sobs but never lets go of my hand. Doctor DuBois shoves in his other hand and jerks the thing out, ripping me open with brutal force.

“Take it out of here.” He hands the gray blob to Clementine, who holds the bloody thing away from her as she leaves.

“My baby…” Fluid and flesh gush from my center onto the bed.

“Lizzette, hand me that clamp,” the doctor says. “More towels.”

The ravaged organs judder in my abdomen. Between my legs sears like frostbite. My teeth gnash together, clenching and biting.

DuBois shoves a bone in my jaw. “Stay with me, Barbe-Nicole.” He reaches for a knife, the blade glinting in the light before he drives it down, cutting into the mush expelled from my body. Merciful darkness. The Red Man is waiting.

***

Father Bernard’s voice reaches into hell. “The dead may look no more upon this imperfect life, now that they have seen the glory of the world to come.”

My eyelids are weighted down, too heavy to open more than a sliver. The vile smell of blood combines with incense: frankincense, myrrh, and sandalwood. A resonant chant hums in my ears. My lips are cracked, my tongue is as shriveled as a dried sponge, my limbs flaccid.

François squeezes my dead fingers; his head bowed, eyes closed. But wasn’t he gone on a sales trip? Clementine on my other side. Papa and Maman stand in the shadows with Jean-Baptiste, who sobs miserably. Lizzette slides rosary beads through her fingertips.

Father Bernard places a coin on my tongue and closes my mouth. “That they may taste no more of this world, but rather use their mouths for praising God in Heaven.”

I am dead.

But, did our baby die with me? The thought startles me, and coins fall from my eyes.

François takes my cheeks in his hands. “Barbe-Nicole?”

I take the bitter copper from my mouth. My voice croaks. “Our baby?”

Maman crosses herself. “Oh, my Lord, dear Lord, thank you.”

Clementine runs out and returns with a swaddled bundle. “You have a daughter, Barbe-Nicole.” She lays the wriggling body next to mine.

“But she was so gray.” I bury my nose into the folds of her neck, inhaling her skin, fresh as Narcissus breaking through the snow. Her tiny ears are as intricately formed as the inside of a walnut shell. Blonde down swirls her head like a crown. Her green eyes are spaced far apart like my sister’s, the beautiful baby I held when I was six—my darling sister who held my hand through childbirth.

“Clementine.” I look to François. “I’d like to name her Clementine.”

“Oh, Barbe-Nicole, I am so honored.” Maman’s hand presses her breast.

“Three Clementines in the family?” Papa says. “Oh, my.”

“I meant--” The darkened room reels, and my head falls back on the pillow. I meant to name her after my sister. “We’ll call her Mentine.”

The baby cries, and Clementine picks her up.

“Let’s give the little family some quiet.” Papa shoos everyone out.

Jean-Baptiste kisses my cheek. “I was lost without you, mon lapin.”

When everyone has gone, François sits on the bed, his hand grazing my face. “I’m going to string Doctor DuBois up by his thumbs. He signed your death certificate.”

“What did I die of?” My voice is craggy.

“Childbirth. You lost so much blood.” He swallows hard. “I was so worried. I almost lost both of you. The baby was tangled in the umbilical cord.”

“I know you wanted a boy,” I say. “Maybe next time.”

He scratches hives on his neck with bitten fingernails. “There is no next time, Barbe-Nicole. The bastard doctor cut out your womb.”

My hand gropes my concave belly, the female part of me, my womanhood stolen.

François searches my face, unable to hide his grief and disappointment.

Does he see me differently? My God-given gift to bear children is gone, and François’s dream to have a son has vanished with it.

Suddenly, I remember my nightmare in labor, the bargain the Red Man forged. I kept my life. I birthed a healthy daughter. And he took his reward.

***

“How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”

– Napoleon Bonaparte

1801 CONCORDANT

The French Revolution had abolished the Catholic Church in France. Although Napoleon Bonaparte was an atheist, he recognized the power and influence Catholics could wield.

He negotiated a concordat with Pope Pius VII, re-opening seminaries, convents,

primary education, and restoring some church property. Napoleon was granted the right

to appoint bishops, supervise the diocese, and pay the clergy. In return,

the clergy swore an oath of loyalty to Napoleon Bonaparte.

13

Blanc de Noir

White wine from Black grapes

Taking over Clicquot et Fils under Philippe’s critical eye and knowing nothing of the wine business would be hard enough. But the Second Coalition War adds to our challenge. Most of the European monarchs have joined a second coalition against France. Napoleon Bonaparte is hellbent that all of Europe bow to his revolutionary creed of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But the more battles he instigates, the more determined the Second Coalition is to squash us like slimy escargot.

Neighboring countries will have nothing to do with us, and France has been bankrupted supporting the Grande Armée. Papa, the political chameleon, says it’s his civic duty to support Napoleon since he’s transformed the chaotic French Republic with strong government, stable finances, and a well-trained armée. He says if we don’t support Napoleon’s wars, we’ll soon be ruled by Britain or Russia.

“Perhaps that’s not so bad,” I joke with Papa. “I love British scones and those Russian fur-lined boots.” I can still make him laugh.

Jean-Baptiste has all but abandoned Ponsardin Woolens’ accounting, as Maman insists he escorts her on social rounds to grand estates with Clementine, who is of marrying age. A small sacrifice to make Maman happy, Papa says.

My hands are full with Clicquot et Fils and Mentine. Under my watchful eye, our daughter shows no sign of melancholia or mania. She grows like a weed the first few years, playing and napping sweetly in the divan next to my rolltop desk as I worry over our ledgers. I keep our grim balance sheets away from François, but each dismal sales call he makes, tells him the awful truth. If the war doesn’t end soon, our business is finished, with no prospects in the offing. François’s mood plummets.

Just as I think we have to close the doors of Clicquot et Fils, my prayers are answered. Napoleon negotiates the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, making peace with the European monarchs, including King George III of the United Kingdom, with his formidable British Royal Fleet.

French soldiers come home to their families. Trade routes open. Our families breathe a sigh of relief for the first time in thirteen years.

Napoleon even reinstates our Catholic religion, and cathedral bells ring for three days. Napoleon gives back our God and saints. I can take Mentine to the cathedral again, instead of worshipping in the cold crayères.

As we plot ways to move Clicquot et Fils forward, François’s mood rises, playing gypsy tunes on his violin. He makes up “Mentine and the Matagot” stories, featuring a magical black cat with gold-green eyes who survives horrific misadventures only to return to Mentine. I’ve told him the tales are too gruesome for a three-year-old, but he persists.

At the end of his latest fantastical story, his voice crackles with mayhem. “Poor Matagot’s fur coat was gouged and torn and covered in blood from his battle with the evil witch.”

Mentine shrieks and squirms on the sofa.

“But no matter how bruised and battered Matagot got, he wanted more than anything to get back to his owner, Mentine. So, he conjured his magic powers, and in the greatest pain imaginable, he peeled off his torn fur coat down to his naked skin. Matagot was so very cold and so very tired that he laid down and covered himself with straw.”

Mentine’s eyes brim with tears.

François lowers his voice to a whisper. “The very next day, when Matagot brushed off the straw, he had grown back a whole new fur coat.”

Mentine snuggles into his chest.

“Matagot ran all the way back to Mentine, who scolded him for disappearing but fed him chicken and cream. Matagot felt very lucky indeed.” François tickles her under her arms. “The end.”

Mentine giggles. “More, more, more.”

Not exactly the way to calm a child before bed. “Bedtime, sweet girl.” I scoop her up and tuck her into her bed with a lullaby.

When I return to the library to have a glass of wine with François, he’s spread out half a dozen maps on the table. He explains a new sales trip he’s planning, hundreds of miles from home. He’s biting off too much, too soon. I hate to discourage him, but the journey is too ambitious. The more I try to reason with him, the more adamant he becomes. When the mantle clock strikes midnight, we’re both exhausted. Better to go to bed and discuss it in the morning. Kissing his nape tenderly, then moving behind his earlobe where he smells like fresh earth and crocus, he moans with pleasure and turns to kiss me. I lead him to our room.

Halfway down the hallway, he caresses my nose. “I’ll be right there,” he says.

Dressing in my finest nightgown, the silk slides over my skin, provoking an enticing tingle of anticipation. I curl up under the covers waiting for François.

***

When the sun wakes me in the morning, his covers are still untouched. I dress myself and Mentine and take her to the breakfast room.

François paces from one end to the other, a cup of coffee in hand. Philippe is already here, as usual, to discuss business at breakfast, a habit I encourage since I can participate while feeding Mentine. A map of Europe is spread in front of Philippe, who looks worried and pale, contrasting with François’s fiery countenance.

He gives Mentine and me a quick kiss before continuing his argument. “Now’s the time to strike while we’re at peace for the first time in a decade. Others will flood in soon enough.”

Lizzette enters with a tray of croissants, fresh from the oven, a red curl escaping from her lace-edged mop cap. The air pulses with the smell of rich butter she brushed between layers of croissant dough. “Bonjour, Madame and Mademoiselle,” she sing-songs, serving me a chocolate croissant and cafe au lait. The door swings closed behind her. Mentine chases her into the kitchen.

“We’ll hit every town in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria.” François pokes the map repeatedly, sweat beading on his brow. “And come home with more new accounts than we can handle.”

I admire his passion, though his zeal borders on manic.

Philippe wipes crumbs from his black and white beard. “Just because trade routes are open doesn’t mean Frenchmen are welcome with open arms. We’ve killed and pillaged our neighbors for a decade, and they have long memories. Besides, Germans make their own wine. Why would they buy ours?”

“Our warehouse is bursting with unsold wine.” François starts pacing. “If I don’t do something, we’ll drown in it.”

Philippe’s hand trembles, spilling his coffee. “Your mother needs me here. I can’t take the trip right now.”

I wipe up the coffee with my napkin.

“Then, I’ll travel on my own,” François says, voice crackling with tension. “Barbe-Nicole agrees with me, don’t you?”

Caught between loyalty and what I really think, I choose the latter. “It might be a good idea to let things settle into peace after the war.”

“Cowards, both of you,” François yells, pounding his fist on the table. “Napoleon finally brought peace. The least we can do is take advantage of it before some other country declares war on us.” He paces the room, touching the wall and pivoting, walking until he touches the other side. “We need customers. We need money to keep the doors open.”

“He makes a good point, Philippe,” I say. “We need sales if we expect to stay in business.”

Philippe darts me a hopeless look, throws up his hands, and trudges out.

François picks up his violin in the corner and moves the bow across the strings. A gypsy song, tweaky and agitated, stirring up a tempest of dancing limbs silhouetted against the campfire. The music stops as suddenly as it started. His arms drop, the violin and bow dangle from his hands. His forehead glistens with sweat. He squares his shoulders and stands tall. The determination on his face melts my heart.

“I’ll be gone a month,” he says. “Calling on the best restaurants and social leaders in each town. I’ll need our best wine for sampling.” He sets his violin in the corner. “You and Mentine should stay with your parents at Hotel Ponsardin while I’m gone.”

I’d rather stick a needle in my eye than submit to Maman’s criticism of my child-rearing.

“I need to do this, Barbe-Nicole,” he says, clenching his fist.

“Then you will do this.” I open his fist and scratch his sweating palm. “Not giving in to your fears makes you very brave in my eyes.”

I just wish I could go with him.

***

François’s sales trip drags on longer than he planned, and I endure two months at Hotel Ponsardin with Maman’s cemetery picnics, fern collecting, and Clementine’s favorite, making jewelry from hair. If Maman’s scintillating activities are not enough to bear, her Wednesday afternoon tea parties in her newly wallpapered salon of exotic green parrots send me packing. A dozen society ladies try to outstrip each other with their Parisian perfumes and salacious gossip; the cacophony of sound and scent makes me so woozy I resort to breathing through a lavender sachet.

“A tapeworm? Are you listening, Barbe-Nicole?” Maman says, wriggling her pinkie finger at me. “The doctor inserts a tapeworm down your throat, and you can eat anything you want and still lose weight.”

The lavender sachet drops from my nose, the discordant perfumes pulse and throb through my sinuses, my vision checkering.

“Is something wrong, dear?” she clamps her hand over mine, her nails tinted gangrene. “Can you hear me, Barbe-Nicole?”

Jumping up, I hold my fingers in my ears and march out. “Il n’y a pas plus sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre.” No one is as deaf as the one who does not want to listen.

I have Lizzette pack our belongings, and the three of us move out to our vineyard farmhouse in Bouzy, where I can eat all the chocolate croissants I wish and learn more about winemaking while François is away.

***

But in Bouzy, our family is too small without François, his music, his spontaneous stories, his contagious excitement. He should be here to bond with his daughter, and what about our marriage? I miss his foot rubs, his inside jokes, his loving glances.

Quite often, Fourneaux comes around, wearing his jaunty burgundy beret. He says he’s checking on the wine, but I suspect he’s checking on us for François. I’ve come to appreciate him; he’s dedicated his life to the single pursuit of making wine with all its intricacies and foibles. His knowledge and patience intrigue me, so unlike Papa, whose interests change with his audience.

This morning he’s going to the cooperage to order wine barrels for Clicquot et Fils. He’s pleased when I gather my shawl to accompany him, leaving Mentine in Lizzette’s loving care.

“Don’t toast the barrels too much, Gustave,” Fourneaux orders the cooper. “I don’t want to interfere with the taste of the grapes.”

Gustave writes the order on his ledger, large ears sticking out from his Phrygian Liberty cap.

“What happens if you toast the barrels longer?” I ask him.

Gustave’s eyes dart to Fourneaux, who nods his permission to answer, which irritates me.

“Toasting definitely changes the taste and smell of the wine,” he says.

“Do any wineries order the barrels toasted differently than we do?” I ask and sense Gustave grows uncomfortable.

“Some like them toasted medium, other burnt,” he says. “Just depends on what flavors they want to add to the wine and how much oxygen they want to introduce in the barrel.”

“What does oxygen do to the wine?” My curiosity runs away with me, thinking how François teases me about my constant questions.

“Some winemakers say it makes the wine smoother and less astringent.”

“Never guessed barrels make such a difference. I’d like to smell the different toastings.”

The cooper covers one ear. “It’s noisy and dangerous in the cooperage, no place for a lady.”

“Good,” I tell him. “Lady places make me a raving lunatic.”

“I’ll take her, Gustave.” Fourneaux holds out his arm for me, but I stride ahead.

Why do men assume we need to be led like sheep? Pushing open tall wood doors into the hot and humid air swirling with fresh oak sawdust, I inhale the metallic tang of hot iron as men pound the barrel hoops into shape. Cauldrons of boiling water steam the oak staves that smell of the forest after a summer rain.

Fourneaux leans close so I can hear him over the din. “It is the simplicity of a wine barrel that makes it special. No glue, screws, or nails. Just oak staves with iron hoops to hold it together.”

“French oak or German?” I ask. “Does it make a difference?”

He holds out a stave for me. “This is German oak.”

I sniff, and it smells sweet. “Vanilla and shortbread.”

“And the French oak?” He holds another stave to my nose.

“Far more subtle and a little spicy.” Two coopers hold a half-formed barrel over a boiling vat. “What are they doing?”

“Softening the wood,” Fourneaux says. “Then they fit iron rims over the ends to keep the barrel together.” He points to the fires at the far end. “Toasting the barrels is the last step.”

Some barrels are charred black inside, some nut brown, and others barely touched by flame. I smell each one: caramel and vanilla. Cinnamon and cloves. Smoke and coffee.

“The juice from last season was very green, wasn’t it?” I ask him. “Perhaps we could mellow the taste with a medium toast barrel.”

The coopers chortle at my suggestion, and Fourneaux’s face turns as burgundy as his beret.

“Am I wrong?”

Gustave catches up to us, huffing. “Ah, Citizen Fourneaux, I forgot to get your signature on the work order.” He hands him the ledger with inkwell and pen.

Fourneaux signs with a flamboyant initial F. “Add ten barrels of French oak, toasted medium caramel.”

The coopers jeer and snigger. “Whatever the little lady says.”

Fourneaux thrusts the pen at Gustave like a sword. “And don’t you dare burn them.” Pen in hand, he stamps out the back door, and I hasten after him.

He tugs his beret over one eyebrow. “Ask me all the questions you want in private. Just not in front of our suppliers and employees. Makes me look stupid.”

“How can my question make you look stupid?” I say.

“A question about your questions?” He throws his head back with a great guffaw.

“I just have so many questions: barrels, temperature, timing, harvest...” We pass by my favorite patisserie. “How about a millefeuille and coffee?” I smile, anxious to continue my education. He agrees and takes my arm, and I feel a pang of guilt that François is not here to join us.

***

14

L'amour fait des merveilles, mais l'argent fait des mariages.

Love works wonders, but money makes marriages.

With Mentine getting into everything she can get her tiny hands on, I haven’t had time to learn much about winemaking. I make an appointment with Veuve Demers to teach me how to blend wine while Mentine is napping. As I head out to the crayère to meet her, Maman’s Cabriolet carriage pulls in front of the farmhouse. A footman helps Clementine and Maman out as Jean-Baptiste jumps out the other side.

“Mon lapin, just look at what the countryside has done for you.” His hands spread out my red-gold curls like a flag unfurling in the wind. “The sun kissed your hair, put roses in your cheeks, and sparkle in your eyes.” He hugs me, and his radiant energy infuses me with cheer.

Sister Clementine leans down to kiss my cheeks. She’s grown so tall, slender, and beautiful, yet still with the innocence of a sixteen-year-old.

Maman struggles to get her enormous hat out of the carriage door, a full regalia of peacock feathers. She fusses and sputters as feathers fall to the ground like a molting bird. It’s a wonder she doesn’t screech and fly to roost.

Two footmen unload crates and baskets from the back.

“What’s all this?” I ask her as she taps her cheek for me to kiss and grimaces at my peasant blouse and skirt. I can’t even claim to be clean since I’m wearing my cellar-rat clothes.

“Just because you insist on living like a country bumpkin doesn’t mean my granddaughter needs to,” she says and turns to the footman. “Bring everything to the nursery.” She leads him into the farmhouse, and we follow.

I hold up a finger. “Mentine is napping.” But already, my daughter squeals with delight to see her.

“Mémé, you came,” Mentine uses the nickname Maman insists on, feeling she’s too young to be a grand-mère.

“I can’t wait to see Mentine in the Little Bo-Peep outfit.” Clementine skips to the nursery.

Jean-Baptiste poses preposterously in the throne chair, looking like Bo-Peep herself, in his periwinkle pantaloons and brocade waistcoat. “Mentine will look better in the Marie Antoinette gown with her coloring.”

“So, you’re in on this?” I ask him.

“Maybe a trifle.” He holds his periwinkle fingernails an inch apart. “Maman was certain Mentine had nothing appropriate to wear for the social rounds.”

“This country bumpkin should be insulted,” I say. “But Mentine will love the attention. Especially with François gone on a sales trip.”

“He’s still gone?”

A remorseful pang in my heart. François. His letters are full of the despair and loneliness of the road. Too hard on him. I should have never let him go. “It’s difficult to sell wine when Europe is so poor from the wars.” Folding a crochet blanket from the wood-planked floor, I place it in the basket near Jean-Baptiste.

“And now you’ve taken up crochet?” His fingertips brush the blanket. “Oh, my dear. You have become a bumpkin.”

“I don’t make them.” My nose wrinkles. “François’s mother started making blankets when Mentine was born, and I don’t have the heart to stop her. I give them to our vineyard workers.” Her mania drives her to crochet through the night; her fingers rubbed raw from the needles.

Jean-Baptiste points to the kitchen door. “At least I can count on you to have champagne.”

I laugh. “It’s not even noon.”

“But I have news, with a capital N.” His rouged lips pout. “And, we’re definitely going to need champagne when you hear it.” Peering in the crackled mirror, he separates his charcoaled eyelashes with his long pinky fingernail.

“Well, then, by all means.” I fetch a bottle of Clicquot et Fils from the icebox and push out the cork with a loud pop. Champagne flows over the table.

“Too much fizz,” I say, disgruntled. Sipping a mouthful from my tastevin, the lethargic bubbles fall flat on my tongue, losing their fizz when the cork exploded.

“The more fizz, the better.” Jean-Baptiste pours the murky bubbles into our glasses. “Don’t tell me you’re a wine snob now, mon lapin.” He clinks my glass, and we drink.

“What are we celebrating?” I sniff the bready smell of yeast in the bottom of my glass.

“I am betrothed!” He pours us more.

“You’re breaking my ears.” Grand-mère’s expression for bad jokes. “Who are you marrying?”

“Ah, that is the surprise.” He swigs his coupe and pours more. “Therese Blankenship.”

Champagne spurts from my mouth. “Your boyfriend’s sister?”

“She’s pregnant and cannot marry the father since he’s already married.” Grinning impishly, he drops the bottle into the ice bucket. “If her father finds out the truth, he’ll disinherit her.” His hands flourish in mid-air. “Jean-Baptiste to the rescue.”

“Oh, brother, what are you getting yourself into?”

“I’ll be running her father’s thread factory.” He pouts and stares into his empty glass. “Maman is beside herself with joy to have her only son married off so well.” His spun-gold hair tumbles forward like theater curtains after the final act.

Parting his hair, I take his precious cleft chin in my hand. My first ally in this world, the two of us never fit here. But in our own world, we didn’t care. “You can’t possibly go through with this.”

“What choice do I have? You, yourself, warned me about what lays ahead for men like me. I’d be strung up by my thumbs.”

“Have you told Therese the truth?”

Jumping up, he bounces on his toes nervously. “Therese would do anything for her brother. And she has her own peccadilloes, so it’s mutually beneficial.”

“When is the wedding?” It’s wrong for my brother to be forced to live a lie, but it could save his life.

“Her father wants us to have the wedding at their plantation in Martinique,” Jean-Baptiste says. “Hébert will be best man for both of us.”

Maman and Clementine hold Mentine’s hands as she trounces out of the nursery in full Bo-Peep regalia, pantaloons, crinoline skirt, and lace bonnet. “Aunt Clementine’s taking me to meet her son.”

I tickle her. “Your aunt doesn’t have a son, silly.”

“I will, soon,” Clementine says quietly.

“Clementine is to be married next month,” Maman says. “Baron Barrachin has a son in need of a mother.”

I want to smack the smug smile off her face. “Clementine is sixteen, Maman. Let her be a child before she’s a mother.”

Jean-Baptiste raises his arms to the heavens. “Praise be to the Goddess of Liberty; Maman has finally completed her matchmaking.”

“Clementine will be the most prestigious wife in all of the Champagne.” Maman flutters her peacock fan.

“That is the most perfectly hideous reason to marry,” I say. My sister’s beautiful face crumbles, and I fear I put my foot in my mouth. “Clementine, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Don’t be jealous of your sister, Barbe-Nicole. You had your chance to be married into the Souillon family.” Her hand glides across the room. “Clementine’s new home occupies an entire block of Willow Street. A magnificent property, exquisite paintings, sculptures, and fine furniture. It makes Hotel Ponsardin look like a shack.” She fondles Clementine’s long locks. “She’ll never have to lift a finger.”

The mantle clock strikes eleven. “Oh, my goodness,” Maman says. “We’re running late for luncheon with the Baron.” She fluffs her fan at them. “Jean-Baptiste, get Mentine’s overnight bag, would you?”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure.” Jean-Baptiste prances across the room like a trained poodle, pirouetting in front of her.

“Behave.” Maman swats him with her fan. “Clementine, take Mentine to the carriage.”

My ire shoots through my eardrums. “Not so fast, Mentine.” I hold her shoulder. “I thought you wanted to go down in the crayère tonight.”

Mentine breaks from my grasp and runs to my mother. “Let me go with Mémé.”

My heart hurts that she chooses Maman over me, but why wouldn’t she? Maman has parties and costumes and presents, and all I do is bury myself in the caves.

I bend over and tie the ribbons on her bonnet. “I’ll drive up to Reims to get you this weekend.”

“Come along now.” Maman holds out her hand, and the three of them leave.

Jean-Baptiste flounces out of the nursery with Mentine’s carpetbag swinging on his arm.

“Come with us, Barbe-Nicole.” He twists my hair into a chignon without so much as a hairpin. “You must have something to wear to meet the Baron.”

Shaking my head, my hair falls around my shoulders. “I’m learning to blend wine today.” Now that it’s settled, I’m anxious to get to it.

“You’re trading a visit to the Baron to be a cellar rat?” He tweaks my nose, and I nod. “Then be the best cellar rat in the Champagne.”

“Be sure to kiss your bride for me.” I walk him out. “Or should I say best man?”

“Whichever one suits my fancy if you take my meaning.” He winks wickedly and climbs aboard.

I say a silent prayer that this sham of a marriage works for him. Waving at them as the carriage takes off, I think I should have gone with them. But it would turn my stomach watching my little sister being sold to the Baron.

As their carriage disappears over the hill, I miss François. My heart is empty. Dreadfully empty. I trudge up the hill to meet Veuve Demers, hoping to distract myself, if nothing else.

***

15

Briller par son absence.

Be conspicuous by one’s absence.

Veuve Demers stands at a long oak table, lanterns hanging overhead, marking tags on a dozen carafes. The fermenting wine and mineral smell of chalk conjure up Grand-mère as if she’s standing beside me. I reach for my tastevin. Not wanting to ruin the purple boots François gave me for my birthday, I step around a puddle of groundwater.

“Where do all these wines come from?” I ask her.

“We blend various vineyards and different vintage years to balance flavors, tannins, texture, and other characteristics of the wines.” She ties the last tag around a bottle with her leathery fingers that have weathered four dozen harvests by my count.

The first carafe is marked 1798. “That was the year we married, it rained all summer,” I say, inhaling the weak fumes. “Too much water for the grapes?”

“I’m impressed,” she says. “Grapes like to work for their water. The more they’re stressed, the more flavor.”

I stick my nose in the next carafe. “1799 was hot and cloudless, and the juice is pungent, almost overpowering.”

Veuve Demers steps back, suspicious. “How are you doing that? You haven’t tasted a thing.”

“Lucky guess?” I can’t admit the shameful curse of Le Nez.

Veuve Demers holds another carafe to my nose. “What do you smell from this?”

“Ripe blackberries like Grand-mère grew in her country home.”

Her papery eyelids narrow. “Who was your Grand-mère?”

“Marie-Barbe-Nicole Huart-Le Terte.”

“That makes sense. I should have pieced it together before now.”

“You knew my grand-mère?”

Veuve Demers lifts the lantern and stares at my nose. “Years ago, she told me her granddaughter was Le Nez. Was that you?”

“I’ve learned to live with my sensitive nose, though it gets me in a lot of trouble.”

“How so?” She studies one side of my nose, then the other.

I huff, thinking of the abject fear people have shown when I’ve told them about Le Nez. “People get suspicious when I smell the rain coming or predict locusts on the way. I smell diseases they’d rather not hear about. During the Reign of Terror, there was so much blood everywhere, I had to wear a scarf around my nose.”

Veuve Demers shivers. “They could have guillotined you as a witch.”

I laugh. “That makes me feel so much better.”

She sits beside me on the bench. “Your Grand-mère was searching for someone to carry on her father’s talent for champagne. Le Nez should not be taken for granted.” She points to my tastevin. “Is this from her?”

I nod. “Passed down from my great-grand-père Ruinart.”

Hours pass as we blend new combinations, swirling and sniffing and sharing our thoughts until we’re happy with the blend. A cuvée, in winemaker terms.

“What happens to the wine we didn’t use to make this cuvée?” I ask.

“We save the vintages to use for blending in coming years. The right cuvée is the secret of good Champagne.”

“So, a winemaker must remember the characteristics of their past wines so they can create new champagnes in the coming years?”

“That shouldn’t be difficult for you,” she says. “Does François know about your Le Nez?”

“François sensed I was Le Nez before I knew.” His name snags a pain in my chest—no word from him in two weeks. “I better get back. Lizzette expects me for dinner.”

She lays her finger aside her nose. “Trust your instincts, Madame Clicquot. Winemakers would sell their soul to the devil to possess what you do.”

The Red Man lurks in a dark corner of my mind. “Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

Walking home, I try to recall every word of the poem in François’s last letter.

The spot on my chest where your head fits feels so cold.

My waist, where your hand holds, is bereft and forlorn.

My ears ring without the sound of your voice.

My voice has gone flat and tuneless.

My fingers grow dull without the touch of your skin.

My tongue is a useless appendage without the taste of your mouth.

I am a fallow field waiting for your spring rain to awaken me.

***

Lizzette serves me lamb stew from a cauldron bubbling on the fire.

“Who taught you to cook like this, Lizzette? You’re a seamstress by profession.”

“The Chef de Cuisine at Versailles would not allow me in his kitchen, but early in the morning, I helped his kitchen servant, a widow like me, prepare dishes for the servants: beef bourguignon, cassoulet, onion soup…dishes to sustain the soul.”

“Smells wonderful.” I push around the carrots, potatoes, and lamb, willing the hearty scent to stimulate my dull appetite.

Lizzette turns up my palm, running her old fingers over the lines.

“What does my palm tell you?” I ask.

“It says you must write François and tell him to come home.” She squeezes my hand and takes away my untouched plate.

“It’s that obvious?”

Her forefinger pulls down her bottom eyelid. Lizzette sees all...with one good eye.

I write François at the hotel he is staying and tell him to come home. I need him.

***

16

Un barbe ne fait pas le philosophe.

A beard does not make a philosopher.

Reading Chaptal’s winemaking manual by the glimmer of the stinking whale oil lantern, I’m submerged into the mysterious alchemy of wine. The budding grapevines, soil releasing earthy perfume in the summer sun, a rain shower washing the leaves clean; all part of the miraculous cycle of making wine.

The wind shrieks outside, and Mentine climbs in my lap, shivering. We need a cheerful gypsy tune on François’s violin to buoy our spirits. But his violin stands in the corner, silent and waiting.

With a fierce gust, the front door bursts open. A man steps through with a scruffy beard and tangled hair to his shoulders. Mentine screams and clutches my neck.

“It’s Papa, Mentine,” I say, standing with her in my arms.

François runs to hug us, smelling ripe with sweat and unwashed clothes, the dusty road, Calvados brandy. Mentine whimpers and turns away.

Over François’s back, I see a stranger standing in the gaping doorway, holding a jug and looking at us with the amber eyes of a bear, pink lips glistening out of his thick ginger beard. Brawny-shouldered and large-boned, freckled complexion with flushed cheeks, he looks like the ogre atop Jack’s beanstalk.

“Barbe-Nicole, meet our new salesman from Germany.”

“Louis Bohne, Fraulein.” The ogre extends his thick hand. “Now I know why François was so eager to get home. You do resemble the painting of Bathsheba Bathing.”

Does he mean to insult me? “I prefer to wear clothing,” I say.

“Ah, beautiful and a quick wit,” he says, slapping François’s back.

Lizzette comes to see about the commotion. “Oh, Master François, we’re blessed to have you safely home again.” Mentine wriggles free and runs to Lizzette, who picks her up. “Anything I can do for you before I put her to bed?”

“Not unless you care to join us, Frau.” Bohne holds up his jug.

“Not my drink,” she shoots back.

“Let me put Mentine to bed,” François says. “I’ll tell her a matagot story.”

Mentine buries her head in Lizzette’s shoulder.

“No matagot tales tonight,” I say. “She’s been having nightmares since you’ve been gone.”

“Bring your violin, Master Clicquot,” Lizzette says. “You can accompany my lullaby.”

François picks up his violin and follows them. Soon we hear ‘A Chantar,’ the Trobairitz song Mentine loves. I’m grateful François is home, but what about this character he brought with him?

“What’s a matagot?” Bohne asks.

“An enchanted black cat who tears you open to eat your heart...or grants your heart’s desire, depending on what you feed him.”

His wily eyebrows fly up, and he chuckles. “François is full of surprises.”

“He loves to bring Mentine to the brink of terror before the matagot grants her wish.”

He rubs his beard. “François wears the masks of tragedy or comedy, with no in-between. Wouldn’t you agree?”

His familiarity rankles. “I have no intention of discussing my husband with you.”

“I meant no offense. François and I have gotten very close these past weeks.” He stretches his back. “Mind if I sit?” Taking the throne chair, he sets the jug on his lap. “We rode straight through from Mannheim, only stopped off for more Calvados.” He tosses the jug up on the back of his hairy forearm and takes a swig.

“How did you meet François?” Getting glasses from the sideboard, I set them on the table next to him.

He pours us Calvados and hands me a glass, smelling as luscious as a pear tart fresh from the oven.

“François was trying to sell champagne to the Manheim pub, prattling on with his French accent about how vin mousseaux is called Champagne and how Madame Pompadour named it that. He was so wound up, he wouldn’t stop talking until the proprietor wanted to throw him out on his ear.” Louis laughs and drinks, shakes his head.

My stomach kinks. I can just hear François starting his pitch, losing his breath, sweat beading his brow, his larynx straining, talking in circles.

“I took pity on François and bought a bottle of Clicquot et Fils to share with the owner. François opened it with the finesse of a royal sommelier and poured with his thumb hooked in the punt. By the time we finished, the owner bought twenty cases.”

“Twenty cases?” I laugh, relief bubbling up. “That will ease the glut in our cellar.”

“That was just the first day,” he says. “The next few days we sold sixty more together.”

“That’s a miracle.” I cross myself, then yank my hand down to the table.

“You needn’t worry about that now that Napoleon restored Catholicism.” His hand covers mine, warm and comforting.

Pulling my hand away, I stand. “I’ll get some sausage and cheese.” This stranger wouldn’t dare hold my hand if François was in the room.

“I’m always hungry,” he says, as I duck into the kitchen, leaving the door ajar.

While I slice salami, he unstraps a gun from his calf and slips it in his bag. What kind of hoodlum did François bring home?

Setting down a tray of runny camembert, Saucisson Sec sausage and baguette, I hold out my palm. “We lock guns in the case for safety.”

His jaw clenches. “I never give up my gun.”

“Then you will have to leave.” I point to the door, hoping he doesn’t see my arm shaking.

He glares at me. But when the clock strikes the half-hour, he reluctantly gives me the gun.

Keeping him within sight, I lock it up. He takes a chunk of sausage but watches me store the key in my pocket.

“François told me how much land you own here in the Champagne,” he says, cutting more cheese. “You’re sitting on a gold mine.”

My throat knots, the picture all too clear. The charlatan saved François to gain his trust.

“I’m afraid François’s enthusiasm misled you, Monsieur. Our land is leased to vignerons. Clicquot et Fils is only a négociant. We sell other winemaker’s wine and have lost money every year since the wars.” I toss back a Calvados.

Reaching in his bag, he takes out a wooden pipe with a long handle and carved bowl and fills it with tobacco. He lights it without asking, his fingers thick and squared at the tips, quite the opposite of François’s slender fingers. His tobacco smells sweet and spicy.

“So, you see, we do not have enough profit to afford a salesman,” I say. “I’m sorry you’ve come all this way on a lark.”

He laughs loudly. “François said you’d be wary.” His fleshy lips suck his pipe. “But you only have to pay commissions. If I don’t sell your wine, you owe me nothing.”

Mentine shrieks, and I run down the hall to her bedchamber. François crouches by her bed, hands clenched like claws.

Mentine’s little hands squeeze against her eyelids, then her fingers spread to peek. “Can the matagot grant me a beautiful white pony with a long tail I can braid?”

Lizzette smiles from her stool in the corner, lute on her lap.

François leans over and brushes his nose on Mentine’s. “If you rub the matagot’s nose very gently and feed him chicken, he’ll grant you your heart’s desire.”

“Mentine’s wish comes true, and everyone lives happily-ever-after.” I kiss her and tuck the blankets under her chin.

Lizzette stays for prayers while I pull François out to the hallway. “She’s not used to your stories. You’ve been gone too long.”

He presses my shoulders against the wall and kisses me with the taste of Calvados on his tongue, not stopping until I’m gasping for breath.

“This is why I hired Louis,” he says with a drunken grin, then stumbles out to the salon.

Bohne looks up from a book he’s pulled from shelves lining our walls, stacked vertically and horizontally with books.

“I told you, Louis, I’m never leaving them again,” François says and turns to me. “Living without you and Mentine was the saddest time of my life. I’m not going to abandon you like my father did, always on the road selling wool.” His eyes are glassy and bloodshot. He’s exhausted and drunk, never good for his mood. This Bohne character is no good for him.

“Bring the jug, Louis, and we’ll show you the caves.” François staggers toward the door. “The Romans dug them back in 1 A.D.”

“Not now.” I block his path. “We’re bottling now, and I can’t have the blends mixed up.”

“You’re telling me I can’t go down in my own caves?” François reels back and hits his head on the wall with a loud crack. He slides down to the floor, legs splayed.

“Time to sleep, my friend.” Bohne lifts François like a baby. “We’ve had a long day.” Following me, he lays François on our bed. I cover him with Catherine-Françoise’s crochet blanket.

Returning to the salon, Bohne sits in the throne chair as if he owns it now. “He spoke of nothing else but you on the road. How smart and perceptive you are.”

All his drunk bluster is suddenly absent, another reason not to trust this man. “You can stay in that room.” I point to a door off the salon and walk toward the hallway.

“François wants Clicquot et Fils to succeed so he won’t disappoint you. Let me help him.”

“Good night, Monsieur Bohne.”

First locking our bedchamber door, I change into my nightgown. Then, I take off François’s clothes. He’s gotten thinner without my encouragement to eat. I should be happy he’s home, happy he hired a salesman, so he won’t have to leave again, happy to have more sales orders than we’ve had all year. But François didn’t even write me about Bohne and forced him on me without a chance to discuss it. That doesn’t sit well.

Laying with my back to François, my head is a jumble. He reaches around to stroke the curve of my hip, and his touch sets off a tingle I can’t resist.

Still, Louis Bohne weighs on my mind.

***

17

Avoir une araignée au plafond.

He has a spider in the head.

When Philippe comes to check on business, he’s not himself. Dark circles hang under his eyes, and his hands tremble.

“Catherine-Françoise had a bad night,” he says, as I serve him Lizzette’s croissants and rhubarb jam. “What do you hear from your German salesman? Or did he disappear with our samples, as I thought?”

“Nothing of the sort,” François says. “He’s making inroads into the British market.”

“He’s having the time of his life at our expense.” I fan a pile of receipts. “Look at these expenses for caviar and foie gras he submitted for reimbursement.”

“Louis needs to impress customers to make his way into the best households, and then, they will buy in spades.” François pushes back from the table. “Read Louis’s report.”

I pick up Bohne’s letter. “The British don’t trust the new treaty with Napoleon. They think it’s a lullaby to lure them asleep while he plots his next move. They’re not inclined to buy French champagne except from their trusted supplier, Moet, unless we jump on hind legs like a French poodle, begging for their business. Perhaps if I’m a good poodle, they’ll throw me a bone and buy some Clicquot et Fils. Ha, ha. If you see Napoleon, tell him to keep his sword down, so the British may trust the French again.”

I show them his drawing of a French poodle in a tutu leaping across a stage with a flute of champagne.

François bursts out laughing and doesn’t stop until his laugh sounds like sobs.

Philippe turns purple as a beet. “He’s playing you.”

François wipes tears from his cheek. “Louis just has a wicked sense of humor.”

“Cut him off,” Philippe says. “Good riddance.”

“I will not fire Louis.” François stands, hives swelling at his temples. “I’ve seen him in action. People love him. He disarms them with his jokes and a drink or two, and next thing you know, they’ve bought twice as much as they should have.”

Hives warn of his spells, numbing depression, or crippling anxiety that lasts for days. If I catch it early, sometimes I can calm him. Sliding my hand under his palm, I scratch. Everything is fine. I am here.

“You’ve never been a good judge of character.” Philippe throws down his napkin. “I won’t have you ruin what I built.”

“Barbe-Nicole, write Bohne to move on to Amsterdam,” François says.

“Now you’re throwing good money after bad,” Philippe says.

François scratches red welts on his wrists. “After Amsterdam, tell Bohne to circle back through Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Trieste. Have him send orders as soon as he gets them, so we can fill them immediately.”

Philippe stands from the table and coughs, deep and phlegmy, his face gray. “You’ll come begging me to fix it.” He walks out, still coughing.

François turns to me. “Out with it, Barbe-Nicole. From the look of your pursed lips, you agree with Philippe.”

If I don’t support him, his self-esteem will be crushed, and our trust damaged. “I don’t appreciate your tone.”

He huffs, scratches his chest. “Would you please write Louis the letter? My spelling and grammar are atrocious.”

“Yes, they are.” Making a funny face to lighten his mood. “Now, let me soothe those hives with lavender oil.”

Later, I sit at the roll-top secretary in my office. Taking a clean sheet of parchment and dipping my pen in ink, I write Louis. At the bottom, I draw Napoleon Bonaparte with his hand stuffed in his jacket, a poodle tugging at his sleeve.

Dripping wax to seal the envelope, I press my tastevin to emboss the anchor, a symbol of clarity and courage.

“I’m watching you, Louis Bohne,” I whisper. “Don’t disappoint him.”

***

18

Donner sa langue au chat.

To give one’s tongue to the cat.

In the following year, Louis Bohne proves his mettle, developing customers in Germany, Poland, the Baltic ports, and Italy, increasing our sales from eight thousand bottles to sixty thousand for 1802.  How can I quibble about Bohne’s expense account when he delivers results?

Just when sales are getting somewhere, England ends the truce and declares war on France in May 1803. Papa says the Brits are utterly irrational about Napoleon, terrified of his motives to control Europe, especially Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Again, Napoleon conscripts French men into the Grande Armée, leaving our factories and farms to women.

Though Philippe forbids it, François brashly hires two salespeople to work with Louis Bohne’s established customers and sends Bohne to the new frontier of Russia, the largest country in Europe. It’s a foolish move at wartime, but François will not be swayed.

Despite my doubts, Bohne starts sending orders from St. Petersburg, which always includes a letter and a wicked cartoon. In the latest, he draws horns on Napoleon, poking a pitchfork at British red coats who’ve captured a French armada.

Now that the British Royal Navy has made shipping impossible through the Baltic Sea, we have to ship our champagne by land, seventeen hundred miles through Belgium, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, paying tariffs, permits, and bribes. Not to mention extra packaging and cases of wine that fall off the wagon. Some wagons disappear altogether. Preparing and shipping all these new orders overwhelms us, and our finances are strained to the breaking point once again.

Before harvest, I’m in my office juggling urgent invoices, just trying to keep the company afloat until our customers pay.

“Excuse me, Madame, I need to speak with you.” Lizzette curtseys, and I know something’s wrong; we’re beyond that formality. “My cousin requires me to meet him in Sweden for a family conference. He says it’s urgent I attend.”

“Your cousin will have to wait until after harvest,” I tell her, searching for a check that was on my desk this morning but now missing. “We can’t spare you until the grapes are picked. You know how busy we’ve been, and now with harvest, it will be unbearable.”

“Veuve Blanchet can take my place. She knows all the vendangeurs.”

Catarina Blanchet reminds me of my sister, Clementine, with her white-blonde hair and porcelain complexion. “There’s no time to train her. I’m sorry, but you have to stay until we finish.”

She pushes her shoulders back, narrow as they are. “I have no choice in the matter. My cousin has called a meeting, and I must go.”

“Why do you allow your cousin to dictate what you do and where you go?” I say, my anger heating. “Where’s your loyalty? You’ve been part of our family for fifteen years, yet you drop everything when your cousin demands it.”

She tugs her mop cap down, her wild eye blinking. “When revolutionaries stormed Versailles to imprison the royal family—”

My fuse ignites. “Oh, la vache! The revolution is old news. What does it have to do with the harvest?”

She stops me with a raised palm. “I was performing for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette when revolutionaries rounded up the entire royal court and imprisoned them in the Bastille. My cousin hid me in your convent school, thinking it was safe. I owe my life to my cousin. You must understand.”

My boot heel taps furiously. “I can’t allow it, Lizzette. You’re in charge of provisions during harvest, and we cannot do without you. Your cousin will have to wait.”

Slowly, she takes off her apron. “I am a widow, and the only family I have is meeting in Sweden. As a widow, I have free domain over myself unless your Napoleon has changed widow’s rights in his clever Napoleon Code.” Her wild eye wavers, but she holds firm. “I survived the Reign of Terror to be free. Now that I am, I cannot abide anyone, not even you, telling me I am not.” Taking off her cap, a cascade of red curls falls around her shoulders as glorious as autumn leaves. I’m stunned by her regal bearing.

“I have coddled you since you were twelve,” she continues. “Championed your idiosyncrasies, encouraged your candor, defended your mulishness. But I did not raise you to be self-centered. You’ve done that all yourself.” Placing the neatly folded apron and mop cap on my desk, she leaves me alone to stew.

I suppose I deserve Lizzette’s ire. She’s not my slave, after all. She’s my friend and sounding board, my rock. And now she’s gone.

Suddenly it’s stifling in here, and I open the window. Out on the street, I see Papa helping Lizzette put her trunk into a travel coach. He must have been coming to see me. But no. After the coach takes off, he continues walking down Rue Hospital. Strange.

Under Lizzette’s apron and cap, my desk is cluttered with unfilled orders and unpaid bills that need attention. Better get to it. No one else will.

***

NAPOLEON’S CORONATION AS EMPEROR

Paris, France

1804. Opposite political factions of Royalists and Jacobins sought to assassinate Napoleon, trying to take over France. They wanted to regain control of the vast landholdings confiscated from the church and aristocracy during the French Revolution. Even the exiled King Louis XVIII vowed to reinstate all seized property to the original owners.

Meanwhile, Napoleon needed to establish himself as royalty to deal with foreign rulers on an equal level. On May 18th, 1804, he convinced the Senate to pass a law crowning him Emperor of the French, superior to a mere king. Upon Napoleon’s death, his title and throne would pass to his heir. A particularly challenging problem since he had no heir, and Empress Josephine was too old to give him one.

“Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.”

– Napoleon Bonaparte

Barefoot and half dressed in white velvet pantaloons embossed with golden bees, Napoleon Bonaparte looks through the great windows of Tuileries Palace to the gardens. Shining columns line the grand alley; thousands of lanterns sparkle in the trees. He hopes Josephine sees this magnificent sight as she dresses for their wedding.

Nine years after their civil marriage, the Bonapartes must take holy vows in the Tuileries chapel. Pope Pius VII insisted that he’d refuse to take part in Napoleon’s coronation without this sacred marriage in the church.

When Napoleon turns around, the chamberlain of Tuileries Palace holds his jacket, arms outstretched, with an impertinent smirk. Napoleon puts one arm in his sleeve, then another.

The cuffs hang below his buffed manicure. “Thiard, what is the meaning of this?”

The chamberlain turns scarlet. “Oh, sir, I apologize. I was assured the jacket had been altered.”

“I am to be in the chapel in ten minutes.” Napoleon tears it from his body. If this jacket isn’t ready by then, I’ll replace you with a thousand other chamberlains who wish to serve the emperor of France.” He throws the jacket at him, and Thiard backs out of the chamber.

While Napoleon waits, he writes Louis XVIII, who condemned his decision to crown himself emperor. “The right to my throne is given me by France. I will defend it with my sword.”

He hears someone enter. “That was fast, Thiard.” But it’s the ghastly Red Man.

“How do you think the Pope discovered that you and Josephine were only wed in a civil ceremony?” he says.

Napoleon’s stomach knots. “Are you implying it was Josephine?”

“She is too old to bear an heir, so arranged a Catholic wedding so you cannot divorce her.”

“I would never divorce Josephine. She is my treasure. My heir is my nephew and grandson, Napoléon Louis Charles Bonaparte.”

“You mean Josephine’s grandson. You need your own son to carry on your legacy.” The Red Man coughs, splattering phlegm.

“Egad, man, get that cough looked at by a doctor.”

Thiard returns and holds the jacket for Napoleon to try.

“Fit for an emperor, oui?” Napoleon asks the Red Man, but he is gone.

“Where did he go?” he asks Thiard.

“Who, sire?”

“Never mind.” Napoleon wishes he could rid himself of the loathsome Red Man, but his advice has proven too valuable in his quest to rule Europe.

***

19

Casser les oreilles.

You are breaking my ears.

It’s our fifth harvest, but this one is different. The blistering heat is shriveling grapes on the vines before they can be picked. Veuve Demers couldn’t find enough experienced vendangeurs and brought in wagonloads of dirty, hungry women and children from the poorest neighborhoods of Paris; their husbands and fathers conscribed to the Grande Armée. Peasant blouses cling to their skin, unable to dry with no wind. Colorful scarves cover their necks, trying to protect their flesh from sunburn. Small bumps cover their skin which they scratch until they bleed, infested with body lice brought in from the city. With Lizzette gone, I keep Mentine close to me while we pick grapes, not wanting to expose her to the diseases the workers carry.

François pays no heed to my warnings, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the vendangeurs, while they sing a strange song that shocks me.

And Bonaparte will beat you, beat you, beat you,

And he'll beat you into pap,

And he'll eat you, eat you, eat you,

Every morsel snap, snap, snap.

I’m even more dismayed when François joins in, chanting the song with the mothers and children, over and over, picking grapes faster than me and my little helper, Mentine. Blonde ringlets cling to her flushed face as we pick in brutal heat. She eats more grapes than she puts in my basket.

“The grapes are frying in these temperatures.” François squeezes his fist around a bunch of grapes, pulp oozing through his fingers. “We need to move faster, or we’ll have no crop at all.”

“Casser les oreilles,” Veuve Demers says. You are breaking my ears. She dumps her basket of grapes on the table where old women sort, throwing away more than they keep, the skins brown, scarred, and sticky.

The air crimps and waves in temperatures higher than anyone remembers. Another woman collapses in the field, and François carries her to the bunkhouse with the others. We send for a doctor to care for them.

“We need to bring in more vendangeurs,” François urges Veuve Demers. “I’ve carried three women down to the bunkhouse with a heat rash.”

“The grapes will be gone by the time we bring in more workers,” she argues. “We have to work with the crew we’ve got.”

“I’m picking for you, Papa.” Mentine’s delicate fingers pick a bunch of sunburned grapes, some mushy and others dried into raisins.

“You’re a great help, Mentine.” François wipes sweat from his brow, and I see red dots at his hairline and on his neck.

“You’re getting the rash, too,” I say. “Come back to the house and cool down.”

He shakes his head. “We need every one of us picking, or we won’t have enough wine to fill the orders in the spring.”

Veuve Demers marches down the dirt road between the rows, urging vendangeurs to move faster. François follows her, barking the same orders.

She stops, plants her feet wide, and fists on her hips. “François, you are not helping.”

He pulls hair out from his temples. “We are losing the grapes!”

“Your father trusted me with the harvest for eleven years, and now his son questions my methods? Perhaps you’d like to take over.” She starts to untie her apron.

“Maybe I will,” he yells.

Lifting Mentine to my hip, I run to them. “Please, stay Veuve Demers. François doesn’t mean that.”

His head drops back, shaking his fist at the sky. “We can’t lose this harvest.”

Veuve Demers stuffs her gray hair under her Phrygian liberty cap. “François, go check on the pressiors. Make sure they’re pressing the grapes before they rot.”

He tromps through the vineyards, talking to the sky as if it will answer back. When he gets wound tight like this, it takes a miracle to calm him down.

I take Mentine to the house for a nap and fill a canteen at the well for François. The heat has affected the water as well, tinged red with algae, the horrid stuff. I take it to the pressior barn, but I find Alexandre Fourneaux ordering the workers around with his meaty finger and gravelly voice.

François stands next to him, scowling. “Philippe doesn’t trust me. He sent Alexandre to manage the crush.”

“You’re lucky to have a father who cares about you.” Fourneaux claps his hand down on François’s shoulder. “Mine left before I was born.”

Women load grapes into the basket press. The weight of the grapes themselves force juice to the bottom and out the funnel. I smell aromas of apricot and butterscotch, but a fusty smell ruins it.

“You have a lot to learn, François,” Fourneaux says as women roll a barrel of grape juice into the caves. “Haven’t you been marking the barrels with the year and varietal? How much Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier have you stored? You need to keep records to make good wine.”

François grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. He can’t take this.

“This is our harvest,” I tell Fourneaux. “Tell Philippe your services are not needed here.”

François waves a pressior woman off the ladder, climbs up, and cranks the wheel, his face red from strain.

“He doesn’t have to do it alone,” Fourneaux says.

“He is not alone, and we’re managing this harvest as well as anyone in the Champagne. Isn’t that worth Philippe’s respect?”

François yells over the squeals of the pressior. “Be sure to tell Philippe we have already shipped a hundred cases to St. Petersburg without his help.”

“It’s ludicrous to ship wine in this heat,” Fourneaux yells back.

“Please leave,” I plead. “François does not need this extra pressure from you or his father. The harvest is a mess. It will be a mess with or without your help.”

Wistfully, he squeezes my shoulder. “François is lucky to have a woman like you.”

“Yes, he is,” I quip, ignoring his expression. “Excuse me. I need to get back to picking.”

***

THIRD COALITION WAR

1805. “We are babies in the hands of a giant,” Tsar Alexander exclaimed after Napoleon

defeated Britain, Russia, and Austria at the Battle of Three Emperors.

Napoleon’s astounding victory was met with great euphoria in Paris, where

France was near a financial collapse. Napoleon wrote Josephine:

“I have beaten the Austro-Russian armées commanded by two emperors.

I am a little weary…I embrace you.”

***

20

Mort a mille coupres

Death by a thousand cuts

Catarina, our lead vendangeur, collapses during harvest. “It’s not like Catarina to faint,” I tell François as we carry her to the vineyard shed and lay her on the cot.

Her apple cheeks burn red. Her eyes are bleary, and she is listless. A tiny louse crawls out of her collar, and I brush it to the dirt floor.

She tries to grasp my arm, but her hand falls short. “Izelda, where’s Izelda?” Her eyelids flutter, and she moans.

“Who is Izelda?” François asks.

“Her daughter…Mentine’s age,” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “Look under her blouse.”

The sight makes me gasp. Hundreds of lice wriggle over her abdomen, sucking at her skin.

“Typhus.” François squeezes his eyes closed. “The disease killed more soldiers than the enemy did.”

“What do we do for her?”

He shakes his head. “She’s too far gone. Keep her away from the others; it spreads like wildfire.”

Veuve Demers comes to the door. “Monsieur Clicquot, we need you.”

I wave him on. “Go ahead. I’ll take care of Catarina. But have someone take Izelda and Mentine to the house.” For the hundredth time, I wish Lizzette was here.

Undressing Catarina, I sponge her writhing body, picking lice off as I go. If only I can get her fever to break, but the shed is stifling, sweat dripping down my back.

While Catarina sleeps, I burn her clothes behind the shed.

At sundown, she whimpers, “Izelda,” and heaves her last breath. I can’t help but feel responsible.

***

By the end of the week, four more women and five children have died, despite our efforts to save them. François has worked himself ragged with the harvest, and now that it is finished, he should rest. But he hasn’t come home for dinner and hasn’t eaten anything since this morning. My guess is he’s in the barn packing the Moscow order alone. I pull on my boots to help him. Muddy and dusty, they’re far from the fancy boots Maman used to buy me. I’m sure she still treats my sister Clementine to boots, even though she lives a life of privilege with her Baron.

The sun on the horizon sets the vineyards ablaze in russet and gold, the heat sweltering. I’m forced to take short, halting breaths as I climb the hill. A million fruit flies bat about the still air, drunk on rotting grapes and piles of discarded must. The vineyards are deserted, the leaves wilted, discarded grape clusters shriveled on scorched earth.

Out of the stultifying quiet, a slew of explosions burst like cannonballs from the crayère. Panicked, I start running.

When I reach the entrance, glass spews out in all directions. My heart pounds in my throat. François is inside. I feel it.

“François, François,” I yell above the noise. “Are you in here?” Grabbing my tastevin, I pray he is not. When it’s hot like this, it’s the bane of champagne makers. The fermenting gas inside the bottle expands until it has nowhere else to go and explodes. I’ve heard stories of years past when thousands of bottles of champagne have been lost to the heat. Dear God, not this year. Please not this year. François has worked so hard; it would surely break him.

Through the darkness, a dim light glows from deep in the cave. I carefully tread through shattered glass and tops broken off with the cork still intact. Jagged-edged bottles jut out from the crates, threatening to cut me.

“François, where are you?” I open my nostrils wide, inhaling slow and steady, fermenting wine, chalk, wet crates. Then it hits me: the metallic tang of fresh blood. My worry turns to panic. My nose tracks the blood as I follow the cavern, my shadow a monster on the hewn cavern wall.

Suddenly, another round of explosions blasts hot air in my face. “François!” I scream. Why isn’t he answering? Is he injured? My heart pounds so hard I can’t breathe. My nose leads deeper into the tunnel.

In the center gallery where we bottle wine, François is stripped naked to the waist. His head twists and turns, grabbing bottles and stacking them on the rolling cart. His eyes are bloodshot and glassy, oblivious to bottles shattering around him. Blood and champagne stream down his body and pool on the chalk floor. The red and oozing rash that plagues our vendangeurs covers his chest. Typhus.

When he sees me, his eyes glint strangely. “Barbe-Nicole, we can save it.” His arms stretch out with two bottles, but they burst in his hands, pelting us with splintered glass.

“Stop,” I yell at him. “The bottles are too hot, so when you shake them, the gas inside expands and bursts the bottle.”

“We’re a month late with the Moscow shipment,” he says, reaching for another bottle. “We have to send Louis some wine, or we’ll lose him.” The bottle shatters and slashes his palm. He throws his head back and cackles, rivulets of blood dripping down his chest and arms. “Philippe is right. I’ll never be a vintner.” He dances a macabre jig, kicking up wine flooding the chalk floor.

Bottles burst everywhere like artillery on the fiercest battlefield. Not just where François is packing but echoing through each of the caves that branch off from the gallery.

“François, it’s too hot. We need to get out of here. The entire caverns are blowing up.” Not waiting for an answer, I wrap my arm around his waist and drag him out.

Though the sun has set, the heat is still suffocating outside. Wine and blood soak our clothes.

François arches back and screams at the darkening sky. “Stupid. Stupid. So very stupid.” He drops to the ground and lays back with limbs splayed. “Je donne ma langue au chat.” I give my tongue to the cat.

Don’t speak, I tell myself. François will know I’m placating him, and it will set him off again. I lay beside him and pray the stars will wash away our mistakes.

But my thoughts won’t cooperate. How much wine did we lose? Is there enough left for the Moscow shipment? If we can’t ship, will Louis Bohne quit? Why keep trying when failure is our only reward?

François breaks the silence. “Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.”

“Voltaire.” I reach for his hand and squeeze it. “Then, we will be mad together. Tomorrow, we’ll go down and see what we can ship to Louis.”

***

Mentine runs into our bedchamber, chirping the naughty poem François taught her as she crawls in bed with us.

And Bonaparte will beat you, beat you, beat you,

And he'll beat you into pap,

And he'll eat you, eat you, eat you,

Every morsel snap, snap, snap.

François doesn’t respond. He sweats profusely. The red pustules have spread over his arms and legs, smelling like stale beer. Scratching his head with both hands, he grimaces horribly, babbling unintelligible sounds.

Lifting Mentine off him, I check her for lice, blowing air on her tender, unblemished belly. She giggles, but my fear is unleashed. I need Lizzette, but she chose her cousin over us.

Carrying Mentine to the kitchen, I ask our cook to bathe her. She cocks her mop cap at the strange request, overworked already from cooking for so many during harvest.

“François has typhus,” I tell her, reality sinking its fangs.

With a startled shake of her head, she takes Mentine.

Returning to François, I check my arms. Scratches and bruises from harvest, but no sores--yet. Panic spreads through me like green acid from the dying vats. I struggle to keep down the bile that erupts from my throat.

Tying his hair back with leather, I pour cool water from the pitcher and swab his burning forehead. His eyes are as murky as the puddles we explored as children. He doesn’t respond, just keeps tearing at his hair.

I send for the doctor who’s been treating the vendangeurs. When he comes, I doubt he sees much through smudged pince-nez glasses perched on his bulbous nose.

“He must have caught the fever from your workers. Highly contagious.”

My heart skitters. Mentine has been playing with Izelda. Her mother, Catarina, was the first to die.

The doctor stands back and slicks thinning hair over his shiny head. “You should have called me sooner.” He shakes his head in the dramatic way doctors do.

I take François’s hand in mine. “He wasn’t like this last night. He was dancing in the wine cellar.” In spilled wine and broken shards.

“He was manic, then.” Wiping his glasses, he replaces them on his nose. “The fever brings depression and mania near the end.”

“The end? What are you saying?” I want to break those tiny pince-nez glasses in two, but I clamp my arms across my chest. “You have to do something.”

“Bloodletting to get rid of the bad blood. Or trepanning the skull.”

“My grand-mère died of trepanning. I won’t allow it.”

“The fever has affected his brain, Madame Clicquot.” He turns to leave. “Keep him in this room and stay out of here, or I’ll have to quarantine the entire household.”

“There is nothing I can do to help him survive?”

“Pray.” He puts on his large-brimmed hat and bids me adieu.

Sitting next to François’s bed, I pray every prayer I can remember. When I open my eyes, he is smiling.

I grab his shoulders. “Tadpole.” Maybe he’ll joke and tell me it was a prank. But his hands pluck out his hair as if he’s weeding the vineyard, giggling to himself. When I try to hold his hand, he pries it away and turns toward the wall.

I keep an eye on him throughout the day, but he doesn’t move. He won’t allow me to feed him. I pour water down his throat, but it gurgles out the sides of his mouth.

That night, I sleep with Mentine, who insists on singing the Napoleon lullaby.

Baby, baby, if Bonaparte hears you

As he gallops past the house,

Limb from limb at once he'll tear you,

Just as pussy tears a mouse.

She falls asleep listening to her father’s cruel lullaby. What possessed him to teach her that song? What possesses him now?

In my sleep, Napoleon’s gruesome Red Man tears François limb to limb.

***

“Bonjour, Madame.” A sing-song voice breaks into my nightmare, and I rub my eyes. Lizzette stands above me.

“You came back?”

“But of course, Madame.” She fluffs the feather pillow next to me.

I grab her hand and kiss it over and over. This hand, this familiar hand, with square fingertips and close-clipped nails that has cared for me since I was a child.

“What’s all the fuss, child?” She smoothes my wild curls. “This is not like you.”

“After the way I behaved, I thought you might stay with your family.” I prop myself up. “Where’s Mentine?”

“She went in to visit her father,” Lizzette says.

“François has the fever. We’ve got to keep her away from him.” Jumping up, I run to our bedchamber.

Mentine cuddles in the crook of his arm, singing the Bonaparte lullaby. François eyes are blank and bleary.

Lizzette scoops Mentine up and takes her out. “Come see what I brought you from Sweden.”

“Set the kettles on the fire,” I call after them. “A lithium salt bath has helped before.” I hold his hand. Blood cakes his bitten fingernails.

In half an hour, Lizzette helps me fill the narrow zinc bathtub with buckets of well water and top it off with four boiling kettles. Pouring in the lithium salts, I set the blue bottle on the table near the tub. Together we lift his scrawny body into the steaming water; his bony limbs are stiff and covered with lesions.

“How does that feel, my love?” I ask him. His expression is vacant as a scarecrow’s.

There is a loud knock at the front door, and Lizzette goes to answer it. Massaging François’s rigid fingers, I try to bring them back to life. But the commotion at the front door alarms me. I rise from François’s bath to see what is the matter, leaving the door ajar in case he calls out.

Lizzette wedges against the door with all her strength, trying to shut out Alexandre Fourneaux.

“Barbe-Nicole, tell this she-cat to let me in,” Fourneaux says. “I demand to see François.”

I shake my head. “He’s not up to visitors. He caught a chill in the caves.”

“I saw what he did in the caves. That is no chill.”

I gird my strength. “Let Fourneaux in Lizzette.”

She rolls her wild eye and leaves.

“François has typhus fever. The doctor says it’s contagious and to keep him quarantined.”

Fourneaux takes off his burgundy beret and falls into the throne chair, sinking into the upholstery. He rattles on about the shattered glass in the cave, how I need to clean it up, and a multitude of other grievances I don’t need to hear right now. He’s taking me away from François, but I suppose the lithium soak will do him good. When the clock strikes the hour, Fourneaux huffs with a labored breath. “Does Philippe know François is sick?”

I shake my head.

His moustachio droops.

“François should feel better after his bath.” I stand, and my knees buckle. “Can you bring Philippe here?”

Fourneaux lurches to steady me. “Are you all right? I can stay.”

“We’ll be fine.” Picking up his beret, I place it on his thinning hair, and he leaves to fetch Philippe. It will be an hour or two before they return, plenty of time to get François dressed.

But when I walk back to our bedchamber, the door is closed. I press against it, but it only budges an inch, a bentwood chair lodged against the door. François’s head rests against the rim of the tub, the peaceful scene disrupted by the smell of rotten eggs. The blue lithium salt bottle is broken in two. White crystals have spilled on the table and floor.

I pound the door. “François, let me in.” His head doesn’t move. My ears blare like the sirens that warn of a winter freeze in the vineyards. Peering through the crack in the door, I see his long, lice-pocked hand resting on the rim. A jagged slice of the blue bottle drops from his fingertips to the marble floor, making the tiniest noise that sounds to me like an avalanche.

No matter how hard I butt my shoulder against the door, it won’t budge farther. So, getting a running start, I hurl my body at the door, and it bursts open, breaking the chair.

I see François and scream.

His long chestnut hair floats on the bloody surface, as it did when we swam in the red algae pond as children. The old scars across his wrists have been bisected with precision, slashed along the veins to allow his blood to flow freely into the hot water.

I press my thumbs against the wounds, laying my head on his hairless chest that does not rise and fall. No sound of his beating heart. Not a wisp of breath from his nostrils.

My own heart bucks and heaves against my ribcage like a trapped hare. I shake him, call his name, begging him to breathe. I need him. My throat hurts from yelling, my body shivers with anguish, ears ringing.

Then, silence.

Maybe, if I am still, François will rise from the murky pond offering me tadpoles in his cupped hands.

But he doesn’t move, hair floating out like a halo, leaving me alone without him.

Clouds pass over the window, bathing his face with forgiving light, softening all the gaunt angles. He looks so young. I smooth back his wet hair, no pulse at his temples or under his jaw. His lips curve in a carefree smile of his boyhood.

Not ready to lose him, I rise to lock the door and take off my dress, down to my chemise. Unlacing my suede boots, I set them near the zinc tub and step in.

The water is warm as I lower my body to his and inhale the spring scent still clinging to his body. His muscled abdomen and long limbs, his angular collarbones. He made me believe they’d be mine for eternity.

Interlacing my fingers with his, I scratch his palm with my thumbnail so he knows he’s not alone. His journey is long, and he was never a good traveler, my François.

***

21

Manger les pissenlits par la racine.

He eats dandelions starting at the root.

Philippe calls for a mortician who rubs François’s body with spicy salves that burn the insides of my nose and sting my eyes.

Lizzette closes the shutters and draws the draperies. She ties black crepe to the doorknocker of our home. She drapes black crepe over mantels, picture frames, and mirrors. She stops the clocks to ward off bad luck. Haven’t we had enough?

People stream in to view François’s body lying in a coffin in the parlor. Catherine-Françoise takes to her bed and can’t attend the funeral. The priest moves his mouth, but no words reach my ears. Family and friends pass by, uttering condolences.

The only one I hear is Philippe’s. “François wanted too much for you. He wasn’t up to it.”

He blames me for destroying his family. I pushed François too hard.

I want to protect Mentine from seeing the casket where her father lies, but my arms hang limp, and my tongue lies mute. Maman takes her from me.

My family stays to eat Lizzette’s food, drink our wine, and repeat the same sorry phrases.

“He is in a better place,” they say.

How can it be better if he’s not here with me?

“It was God’s will.”

How can God leave Mentine fatherless and me a widow?

I will never be the same without François. He was my Tadpole, the only one I ever wanted. He saw me for who I was and liked me anyway.

When everyone finally leaves, Lizzette brings her Trobairitz lute into my bedchamber.

“I’m in no mood,” I tell her.

“Please, Barbe-Nicole. Forgive me, but I took one of François poems and made a song for you.”

I can’t refuse this offering from her heart. She strums her lute and sings like a choir of seraphim.

She makes me love the color green

The sprouting leaves, the hills we roll down.

She makes me smell the world as she does

Fresh and humorous.

Full of nuance. Full of hope.

Because she is my one concern

The next thing she says will linger with me for days because she says it.

Miserable tongues will say that a man is meant to think of other matters.

I say that is not so.

Whether foolish or wise

Whatever one does for love is good.

***

FOURTH COALITION WAR

1806-1807. Napoleon sought to cripple Britain with his Continental Blockade, ordering all French allies to cut off trade with Britain, destroying their economy and democracy

while boosting the crumbling French trade. Instead, the Continental Blockade

damaged France and its allies, who relied on British trade.

Prussia joined Britain and Russia against Napoleon.

“How happy I would be if I could assist you at your undressing, the little firm white breast, the adorable face, the hair tied up in a scarf à la Créole. Without his Josephine, without the assurance of her love, what is left him upon earth?”

--Napoleon writes Josephine

Aware his pose will be painted for history, Napoleon plants one foot firmly on the bow of the boat, peering through the mist to find the raft where he’ll meet Tsar Alexander, the most powerful opponent in his quest to conquer Europe. Sweat oozes from his forehead, his neck, his crotch, for mercy’s sake. Mosquitos swarm him, extracting his hot Corsican blood. Merde.

The Red Man paddles below him, croaking like a horny toad. “The Tsar is naïve, romantic and idealistic. His divine mission is to secure peace for all nations, and you are the tyrant of Europe. He will do anything to quash your sword.”

Napoleon will not look at the Red Man crouching under his elbow like some demon that lives within him. If Napoleon looks at him, really looks into those black eye sockets, he’ll be lost. Better to focus on the raft now emerging from the Neman River like a mirage in the Egyptian desert. If he could have negotiated this meeting without the Red Man, he would have, but the Red Man paves the path to his destiny.

“Use your charm and intelligence to disarm him,” the Red Man continues. “Offer him a partnership in your conquests. Show him your heart.”

“Shut up, shut up,” Napoleon spits out between gritted teeth. “Battles are won by force, not kindness.”

The Red Man’s mouth does not open, yet his words coil around Napoleon’s throat like a cobra squeezing his esophagus. “The Tsar is the lynchpin of the entire continent. You must disarm Alexander to captivate him.”

The missive pulsates through his entire being like Islam mantras he learned in Egypt. Truth is more powerful communicated without words. A talent he must learn and employ.

The raft is tented with folkloric embroidery, dozens of boats bobbing around it, armed with soldiers. How can he speak to the Tsar freely with so many ears to eavesdrop?

With a swift pull of his oar, the Red Man crashes their boat into the raft, throwing a soldier overboard and others falling to their knees.

“Keep the Tsar off balance,” the Red Man says.

A plank is lowered for Napoleon. His entourage follows, but he stops them. “Wait here.”

The young Tsar’s hands grasp his, shaking them like they are old friends. Blond curls frame his angelic face, his cheeks bright with promise. His blond eyelashes rise like the sun behind the ocean of his eyes. This beautiful man, ruler of the largest country in Europe, is worthy of Napoleon’s effort.

“I hate England as much as you do,” Tsar Alexander says, still holding his hands.

“Then, we will be brothers,” Napoleon says, heeding the Red Man’s advice. Clearly, the path to power lies in seducing the Tsar with his charisma and intellect.

Prussian and Russian soldiers draw back the draperies of the tent, and the Tsar commands they be left alone in the lavish pavilion. He invites Napoleon to join him on a low divan strewn with sumptuous pillows. The table is spread with a map of Europe, caviar, and chilled champagne.

Alexander grins boyishly. “Russians adore your French champagne.”

“And we adore Russian caviar. It’s British tea we can’t stand.” Napoleon pushes out the cork with an expectant sigh. The cork is stamped with a Clicquot anchor, that odd young fellow who saved his life. Next time he goes to Reims, Napoleon will question how Clicquot sold wine in Russia despite his Continental Blockade. And, to the Tsar, no less. At least their champagne smells better than it did the day they served it to him.

He pours their glasses. “It’s French tradition to look into each other’s eyes when toasting.” He touches two fingertips below his own eyes, then Alexander’s.

“What happens if you don’t?”

“Seven years bad sex.” Napoleon smirks.

Alexander laughs and raises his glass, his blue gaze a galaxy of possibility. They drink, knees touching, anticipation mounting. Their pointed fingers draw on the map of Europe like boys playing with tin toy soldiers, dividing the countries up between them. Afterward, they talk about Catholicism, freeing serfs, tyrannical fathers, and Josephine, her sophistication, diplomacy, and sensual prowess. Alexander says he is lucky to have her. Very lucky.

When Napoleon leaves the pavilion at sunset, he’s forged a profound bond.

“What happened in there?” the Red Man asks.

“Occupe-toi de tes oignons,” Napoleon answers. Take care of your own onions.

That night, he writes Josephine. “The Tsar is handsome and blond and athletic, and if I was a lady, I would bed him.”

Within the week, flyers circulate through Europe, illustrating the two emperors embracing passionately. Napoleon laughs. Let ordinary people marvel at a relationship so extraordinary.

***

22

Prende son courage à deux mains.

To take one’s courage in two hands.

I haven’t the strength to object when Philippe sends letters to Louis Bohne and our other travelers about François’s tragic death and informs them we’re closing the company.

Louis writes me that he’s devastated; his best friend and employer is suddenly gone. He’s worried about me and will return to Reims as soon as the weather breaks in Russia, though Philippe told him not to come. There is no reason for him to make the forty-six thousand argent trip now.

Without consulting me, Philippe sends out a circular to our suppliers and customers. “The recent loss of our son and partner Monsieur Clicquot, who personally managed the company, leaves his father and a young widow with the intention of liquidating Clicquot et Fils.”

My dream has vanished along with François. Mentine and I are living with my parents at Hotel Ponsardin like I never had a husband or a life of my own. Sitting by the window, I watch the first snowfall, thick and suffocating, as afternoon darkens to evening.

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible,” François would quote Voltaire.

But I do feel responsible. François was not strong enough, and I pushed this on him, breathing my own will into his lungs. The one person who understood me, and I, him, is now gone, the company we created, lost.

The labyrinth is barely visible through the thick snowfall. François and I used to meet there when it snowed. We would catch snowflakes and study their shapes, trying to find two alike.

Donning my cape, I walk down the back stairway to avoid voices in the salon. Maman is still receiving well-wishers with their condolences, even a month after François’s death. I tiptoe out, afraid to be discovered, and called in to meet guests. I cannot bear the odor of insincere perfume ladies wear when calling on the bereaved. Or the polite sentiments which cannot soothe my rawness.

Mentine’s bell-like voice catches my ear, and I hesitate. Maman has taken her under her wing, burying her grief with ice cream, horseback rides, and visits to her cousins. It’s ingenuine. Mentine should be allowed to grieve her father. On the other hand, why should I fault Maman for making Mentine happy? François would want her happy. Now that he’s gone, the only thing of which I’m certain is that I’ll never know that happiness again.

I run out to the labyrinth, bare grapevine canes whipping my cheeks. Without the lush leaves of summer, the pathway of the labyrinth is obvious—a turn here, under the trellis there, no nooks in which to hide, no vestibules for stolen kisses, no surprising dead-ends. If only life was so clear. Silent snowflakes blanket the dormant vines, bringing me no clarity at all.

Holding out my hand, I catch the drifting flakes. Two tiny flakes land on my glove, iridescent in the gray gloom. Each snowflake distinct from the other, but their perimeters intermingled. Such was François and me.

Walking to the spot where he first kissed me, I lean on the wall and close my eyes. Snowflakes cover my eyelids, weighing them down. I try to imagine what François felt when he left, cares and worries drifting away. But these snowflakes conjure a different memory—a kiss. I feel François’s first kiss. And all the kisses that followed, giving me license to be loved.

The first star of the evening pokes through the darkening sky, brilliant and winking as François’s star was when he was at war. I hear his voice quoting me Shakespeare.

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”

My nose prickles, stinging me awake for the first time since François died. Every part of my body tingles with this revelation. He wants me to live, carry on our dream. His star glows brighter, outshining all the others, infusing me with confidence.

Wiping snowflakes from my cheeks, I run through the labyrinth toward the house, ready to take on my destiny.

***

The first step is talking to Philippe about my inheritance. The Napoleon Code is less favorable for widows than the Ancien Régime. Veuve. Widow. The very title conjures old hags begging on street corners.

The Napoleon Code grants a widow her mourning dress, the right to live for one year at the expense of her husband’s heirs, and one-quarter of her spouse’s property, including the dowry she brought with her. The rest of the deceased’s property reverts to his father.

When I enter Philippe’s office at Clicquot Manor, an odor hangs in the air that brings back my royal convent school. The nuns made us read to the elders every afternoon, which I didn’t mind except for the smells: disintegrating skin, surrendering muscles, thinning blood, and loss. The last smell most disturbing.

Philippe stands with the help of a cane, a hump taking up residence on his back like a turtle.

“At least you have Mentine to keep you busy in your sorrow.” His lips are barely visible in the overgrown bush of a beard that used to be meticulously groomed.

“I want to keep the winery, Philippe.” My voice sounds stronger than I feel.

He coughs and collapses into the Louis XVI chair next to François’s violin that I gave him after the funeral. “If it’s money you’re worried about,” he says, “I’ll make sure you’re awarded more than the Napoleon Code.”

“I want our winery to continue and grow. François would want me to continue.”

“François wants?” He plucks the strings of the violin, the melancholy sound quivering in my bones. “It’s not a matter of that now, is it? You are too young to toil your life away at a useless venture. There are still men left in the Champagne who would marry you and support you and Mentine. Besides, you have a wealthy father to support you as well. Why work so hard when you don’t have to?” He gazes out the window.

Sitting opposite him, I fold my hands in my lap. “When the Jacobins burned my convent school, Papa brought me home. But, I missed my lessons and hated Maman’s crochet and needlepoint. I was so fidgety and persnickety, Maman insisted Papa take me to the wool factory. The nuns had told him I was good at numbers, so he taught me payroll. That was easy enough, so I attempted the ledgers. I enjoyed being part of the company, getting to know the spinners and weavers, learning about their jobs, seeing how they all worked together to make beautiful products. And, for the first time in my life, I was good at something. I dreamed of starting my own business someday--a wine negotiant. François gave me that chance.”

Philippe wheezes and stares at his lap.

“If I quit now, I’m accepting failure instead of fighting for what François and I were building together.” I take his wrinkled hand, my voice breaking. “If I quit now, what do I have to live for?”

Grief clouds his glasses, and his chin falls to his chest.

How thoughtless of me to bother him with my selfish dreams when his son died under such gruesome circumstances.

He clears his throat. “Every night of François’s life, I lit candles for his health. I prayed for his strength of spirit and that he would not allow himself to fall into despair. Every morning when the sun hit my eyelids, I prayed for light in François life. He wasn’t strong like you.” His fingers pluck a string. “It was too much. The winery was failing, and it killed him.”

“But the winery isn’t failing, Philippe. Clicquot et Fils will ship one hundred ten thousand bottles of champagne this year despite Napoleon’s Continental Blockade.”

Philippe blinks. “Impossible.”

“Clicquot et Fils is succeeding.”

“One hundred and ten thousand?” He strokes his beard. “Sales were seven thousand bottles when I turned it over to you.”

I smile. “Every minute of every day, François and I have scraped and schemed to build this winery to what it is now.”

“Peu à peu, l’oiseau fait son nid.” Little by little, the bird makes his nest. Philippe shakes a crooked finger. “But you can’t possibly manage a winery that large by yourself.”

“I have Louis Bohne and the other travelers.”

“That’s fine for sales and the business end, but what about winemaking and vineyard management?”

“Perhaps you could help?” Maybe it would energize him.

He holds his arms out. “Look at me, Barbe-Nicole. I’ve been retired for three years. I thank God I make it to my chair each day.” He snuffs, shakes his head, then brightens. “Alexandre Fourneaux. Yes. You can work under Fourneaux, and he’ll teach you everything you need to know. He’s been a winemaker for thirty years.”

“No offense.” I hold up my palm. “But we don’t like his wine.”

“My dear girl.” He wheezes. “There is no more we.”

His reproach squeezes my chest like a vice, my heart pounding against my ribcage. All I can do to contain my grief is close my eyes and breathe: lavender and lemon furniture oil, beechwood burning in the fire, the sheep gut of François’s violin strings.

Philippe rubs his eyes. “Do you know who cleaned up our wine caves after François destroyed them?”

How is it I blocked out that awful scene? I haven’t allowed myself to think of it at all, let alone go back there. Bottles bursting from the racks, jagged edges leering, champagne flowing in a river of despair. François cut and bleeding, laughing and crying.

“Fourneaux swept out the glass,” he says. “He didn’t want you to have to deal with it and didn’t want me to see it that way.”

I swallow the knot in my throat. “I won’t work for Fourneaux.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” He chortles, a sound I haven’t heard in months. “You could be partners.” Philippe’s eyes brighten.

Partners with Fourneaux. Not what I had in mind.

That night, after I put Mentine to bed, I walk out to the vineyard labyrinth and breathe in the crisp winter air. I cannot see François, but I feel him here, chasing me, laughing, a brush of a kiss on my nose. He loved my talent of Le Nez, and now I aim to use it.

***

23

Avoir les yeux plus gros que le ventre.

To have eyes bigger than the belly.

Fourneaux and I must invest eighty thousand francs each to our new partnership, equivalent to five years' salary. According to Napoleon Code, Philippe’s investment is the current wine inventory of Clicquot et Fils, which he owns entirely. Funding the partnership is overwhelming since my inheritance from François left me only a quarter of the property we shared. I certainly can’t sell off the vineyards when I need them for grapes. Surely, Papa will lend me the money.

When I can’t find him at Ponsardin Woolens or Reims Town Hall, I look in the closed-off wing of Hotel Ponsardin. He fits a slab of travertine on the floor. I tell him about the wine partnership and how much I need to borrow.

“That’s a fortune, mon chou. Too much risk with the wars still raging.”

“What about your passion? I’ve watched you invest time and money into Hotel Ponsardin through the Revolution, Reign of Terror, and Napoleon’s Wars. Nothing stands in your way.”

“Passion is never sensible.” His jaw angles back and forth. “When I built this house to entertain Louis XVI, I knew I didn’t have enough money to finish it, so I only completed the exterior and the ballroom. Now it’s my haven, something I control in an uncontrollable world.” He wipes the back of his neck with a handkerchief and sits on a marble bench.

“Then you should understand that this winery was our dream, François’s and mine.” I kneel beside him. “To see it through, I need money.”

The sickly-sweet odor of gardenia perfume reaches my nostrils. “I smell you, Maman.”

She ducks through the arched stone doorway, her hair a towering hive of Napoleon’s golden bees. Obsessed with all things Bonaparte, now she dresses as Empress Josephine, her Roman empire gown showing off her diminutive décolleté. “If you continue with the winery, you cannot take care of Mentine.”

“Mentine will benefit from watching me run the business her father and I loved.”

Maman’s pointed fingernail scratches a star on her cheek. “Has it occurred to you that she’s lonely out there in the Bouzy countryside with no playmates, working in the vineyards or like a cellar rat in the dark caves?”

My laugh is harsh and cynical. “Poor little orphan girl, forced to sweep the cellars, never to see the light of day or a friendly face. Is it any wonder I had nightmares after your fairytales?”

“Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood are cautionary tales.” She stands behind Papa, her hand on his shoulder. “We’ve wanted to talk to you about something, and now is a perfect time. Isn’t it, Nicolas?”

He bends down and smoothes a grout line between tiles.

“Oh, Nicolas, you’re such a coward when it comes to Barbe-Nicole.” She swats his shoulder. “When I took Mentine to Paris in November, I took her to your old convent school.”

Her lie makes the hair on the back of my neck bristle. “The convent was destroyed in the revolution, Maman.”

“Emperor Napoleon allowed them to rebuild and open the school again.” She presses her palms into prayer. “Mentine saw the other girls singing and playing and fairly begged me to let her stay. How could I refuse my granddaughter? I arranged for her board and tuition.”

“You arranged?” Her perfume gags me.

“Mentine is six, the same age as when you went to school. You don’t want her to fall behind the other girls, do you?”

Her words whoosh through my numb head like dead leaves in a storm. “But the school is in Paris. So far away.”

“The nuns allow visits, and she’ll be home on holidays.” Maman presses a star on her chin. So many stars, now, they must be multiplying by themselves. “This is not the time to be selfish.”

Her mouth moves, but her words reach me later. All too much, too soon.

“You have to think of Mentine, now,” she says. “It will be better for her.”

Losing François and now Mentine?

“It’s for the best, Barbe-Nicole,” Papa assures me.

I know Maman put him up to it, and it infuriates me when they stick together.

“What is best for my daughter is my decision.” Reeling my tastevin back and forth along the chain, I try to think this through. Doesn’t Mentine deserve the education I received? And, I’ll have my hands full if I get the winery.

I summon all the nerve I have left. “Then, what about money for the wine partnership, Papa?” I hate myself as I say it.

“You’re bargaining with us?” Maman huffs. “You’ll let her go if he gives you the money? Nicolas, give her the money.”

Her perfume makes my nose run like a spigot. “As you said, it’s for the best.”

Papa’s lip curls like he tastes something foul. “I can give you the bank draft from the last Armée uniform payment.”

My sinuses throb and sting, my nose running so much it soaks my handkerchief.

“You made the right decision, Barbe-Nicole.” Maman squeezes my wrist, green-tinted nails scraping me.

I sneeze in her face, a fierce explosion of air and saliva through my nose, sneezing and sneezing as I run out of the chamber, turning the corner before I start to sob.

My gut convulses with each sneeze. Trying to calm myself, I reach for the tastevin, circling the bowl with my finger. An anchor in chaos and confusion. I used to think François was my anchor. Now I have to be my own.

***

The partners meet at Philippe’s office at Clicquot Manor to sign the contract, which will be renegotiated in four years. The new company is re-named Clicquot-Fourneaux, capitalizing on both reputations for champagne.

Fourneaux’s hand trembles as he signs the paper and hands me the ink pen, our fingers touching.

“I need to add a codicil to the agreement.” I write it at the bottom of the contract. “Ten percent commission for Louis Bohne for all his sales.”

“I already fired Monsieur Bohne.” Philippe grips the back of the chair for support.

I blow on the wet ink of my signature. “Louis Bohne is the best traveler on the road. Without him, we don’t stand a chance in foreign markets.”

Philippe pushes his spectacles on his spider-veined nose. “Safer to sell in France.”

“Our country has no money for champagne,” I argue. “The Fourth Coalition War has already been declared against France, thanks to Napoleon’s lust to rule Europe. Last year, ninety percent of our sales were from foreign markets Louis Bohne opened for us.”

“Five-percent commission for Bohne,” Fourneaux says.

“Seven percent, and we pay his expenses,” I counter.

Fourneaux strokes his curlicue moustachio. “You have a deal if you call me Alexandre.”

I grip his hand a shake it. “May our partnership be most fortuitous, Alexandre.”

When he smiles, he’s almost handsome, like a nobleman from the royal court. He smells of red grapes at harvest, full-bodied and robust.

Philippe presses his cane into the floor to stand. “Bon chance. You’ll need more than luck with Prussia, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and Great Britain gunning for us.”

“I’ll bring Mentine to see you and Catherine-Françoise before she leaves for school,” I say.

He waves me off. “My wife can’t take visitors. The doctor quarantined her.”

“Oh, no, Philippe. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

Without acknowledging my comment, he lurches out on his cane.

“Don’t worry about Philippe. God never gives a cross to bear larger than we can carry.” Fourneaux pats my hand. “Perhaps we can celebrate our new partnership over dinner this evening?”

His thoughtlessness irks me. “I have to pack Mentine for the convent.” I pick up my purse.

“Then, perhaps, Saturday evening would be better for a celebration? Say, Chez Casimir at seven?” His eyebrows rise eagerly, a suggestive smile on his lips.

“I am a widow in mourning. You cannot ask me to celebrate. However, as your partner, you can count on me to do everything in my power to make the best champagne in France.”

His face reddens. “Madame, I meant nothing improper.”

“Then, consider the matter settled.” But, I feel anything but settled as I leave. I’m partners with a man I refused in marriage, during wartime when everyone is broke and in no mood to celebrate with champagne. Sliding my tastevin along the chain, I pray for clarity and courage.

***

24

Le chat echaude’ craint l’eau froide.

A cat who’s burned will fear cold water.

There is a knock at the door, and Lizzette leaves to answer it as I tuck Mentine into bed. She sends love to her papa in her prayers, telling him she’s going to school soon. She slips her thumb into her mouth, a habit she broke as a toddler. I don’t have the heart to stop her, so I sing Au clair de la lune and rub her back until her breathing is steady. Blowing out the candle, I shut the door softly.

When I come out, Louis Bohne waits at the front door, rugged and striking in his ushanka hat with ear flaps and fur-trimmed coat.

I run and hug our friend as if that will bring back François. One strong arm enfolds me, the other cradles my head. He smells of cedar, earth, mushrooms, campfires.

“Is this what Russia smells like?” My head on his chest, his heart beats strong, his breathing rhythmic. Calms me.

Lizzette comes in with a tray, clearing her throat.

I back away, realizing how this must look.

“I brought Monsieur Bohne some onion soup.” She sets the steaming bowl and sliced baguette on the table.

“Kind of you,” Louis says. “But perhaps Barbe-Nicole is too tired for visitors this late.”

Now I feel foolish. “Please sit. Eat while it’s hot.”

Hanging his coat and hat on the brass hooks of the coat rack, Louis touches François’s coat, still hanging there, as I do every day. Then, ruffling his ginger hair, he comes to sit with me.

Lizzette pours us red wine and leaves the carafe.

“Pinot Noir from Bouzy.” I clink his glass, and he tastes.

“I didn’t know they made red wine in the Champagne.”

“Only Bouzy Rouge. This wine graced Louis XIV’s table long before champagne existed.”

“Ah, Lizzette’s onion soup. François says it’s the best.” Louis spoons a bite, then presses his fist to his mouth, swallows. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe he’s gone. Being here without him is...” His head shimmies, and he gulps wine. “Philippe wrote that the fever got him. Did he suffer?”

I’ve not told the whole story to a soul, nor will I now, not even to his best friend. “Finish your dinner.”

After he finishes his soup, he retrieves something from his coat pocket. “Almost forgot I brought you a gift from St. Petersburg.” His meaty hand drops a black fluff ball into my palms. It wriggles and mews, flashing gold-green eyes sparked with blue, casting a spell on my heart whether I want it or not.

“A matagot,” I say, enclosing his downy body in my hands, walking to the kitchen, knowing what I must do, and quickly.

“I thought it was a kitten.” Louis brings our wine and glasses. “You mean like the creature in François’s stories?”

“As if you plucked it from his imagination.” The matagot rubs its whiskers on my fingers. I fetch heavy cream from the icebox and pour it into a saucer on the table, while the furry thing scrabbles around in my hands. As soon as I set him free, he pounces on the cream, lapping greedily from my best Limoges saucer with gilded edges and flower garland, a wedding gift from Maman. “Where’d you get this creature?”

“Philippe’s letter reached me at the Palkin Inn where I stay in St. Petersburg,” he says, sitting on a kitchen stool. “I was dining with some fellows, so I took the letter outside under the torch to read in private.” He coughs and collects his thoughts, swallows hard. “When I read François died, and you were closing the winery, my brain started spinning and pounding like I caught the fever myself. I slid to the ground and held my blasted head. Don’t know how long I was there when I felt something rubbing my ankle.” The matagot looks up from the empty saucer. “Just look at those eyes, will you? Reminded me of François’s somehow. I know it sounds crazy, but I thought the little thing would bring you some comfort. I took him back in the dining room and fed it chicken.”

“Lucky you fed him.” I stroke its back. “When a matagot appears, he must be fed, or he’ll bring terrible tragedy.”

Louis’s fist hits his chest. “I’d say the matagot was too late. We’ve lost François, we’ve lost Clicquot-et-Fils, I lost my job.”

“Your job is secure.” I pick up the matagot, examining the white star of fur on his chest. “There’s been a change of plans. Philippe agreed to let me continue the business if I take a partner.”

Louis’s jaw drops, his voice falters. “That’s wonderful, Barbe-Nicole. It really is. But...”

He grasps his wine glass with his broad fingers—practical hands.

“But what?” I bring the matagot close to my heart. “You don’t want to work for François’s widow?”

He gulps his wine. “My brother was conscribed to the German armée to help Napoleon fight Prussia. I promised my brother I would keep his business going and support his family.”

My gut twists. “But they’ll conscribe you, too.”

“For all the government knows, I’m still in Russia. My brother needs my help.”

My chest collapses. “Louis, I wouldn’t have taken on this business if I thought I couldn’t count on you to sell for me.” The matagot jumps from my arm onto the table, arching his back and fur standing on end.

Louis pours more cream in the saucer, and the matagot laps it up. “I owe my brother. I left his coffee and chocolate business when I met François at that tavern. He was glum since he hadn’t been able to sell champagne. And, if there’s one thing I was born to do, it’s sell: how to set the bait, reel them in, and leave them begging for more. At first, I just wanted to show off my skills to your sad-sack husband.” He huffs and blinks. “But when I saw François’s face light up after that first sale, all I wanted was to see his face light up again.”

“I lived for that, too.” It hurts to remember that light that sometimes shone too bright. “When François was happy, he smelled like budbreak in the spring. Ever smell that? The scent of life starting over again? When François was happy, the world was happy.” But when he was sad...

A mouse runs across the floor. The matagot jumps from the table, sinks his claws into its neck and devours it.

Louis grimaces. “I made a mistake bringing that creature here.”

The matagot licks blood off his paws.

“On the contrary. Felix, here, will bring me extraordinary luck and fortune.”

“Felix?” he tugs his beard, half-smiling.

“He’s Russian, isn’t he? Felix is the only Russian name I know.”

“Boris, Gustave, Vladimir...shall I go on?” Louis puts his hand over mine. “I had no idea you’d take on the winery, or I wouldn’t have made other plans. I have to go back to Manheim.”

The warmth and weight of his hand feels so secure, but he’s not offering security.

“Let’s finish that wine.” Slipping my hand away, I pour more Bouzy Rouge and clink his glass with a verve I don’t feel. “To new ventures.” I choke down the wine, tasting thin and bland. I can’t stand to look at Louis holding back tears. The one friend I counted on, now leaving me. Pouring wine in Felix’s saucer, I’m going to need all the luck my ferocious matagot can give me.

***

The following day, when Fourneaux and I reach the crayère entrance, Louis is waiting, his freckled cheeks burnished with cold.

“You left early,” I tell him. “I thought you’d gone back to Manheim without so much as a goodbye.”

He smiles under his thick mustache. “I sent a letter to my brother explaining that I’m keeping my position here and sending money to his family.”

Fourneaux mutters, “We cannot afford travelers.”

“Monsieur Bohne works on commission,” I remind Fourneaux, a fact we’ve been over time and again.

“You must be Alexandre Fourneaux.” Louis extends his hand. “Barbe-Nicole told me about your impressive winemaking. I’d be honored to sell your wine.”

Fourneaux ignores Louis’s hand and pushes open the plank door. Lighting a lantern, he tromps down the stairway into the crayère. Barrels line the walls as far as we can see in the dim light, each marked by grape varietal and vineyard. Aromas of wine, toasted oak barrels, and chalk dust reassure me, even if the men do not.

My work is cut out for me to forge a bond between us for the success of Clicquot-Fourneaux. I’ll have to rely on wine to smooth the way. Fourneaux is the consummate Frenchman, dressed in old-fashioned pantaloons and waistcoat buttons bursting over his ample belly. Under his beret, his hair has turned white since I met him, yet his proud posture makes him seem younger.

Louis Bohne is no svelte man, either, with his substantial build and strong shoulders. His demeanor is jovial, ready to disarm you with his stories and make you laugh. His Russian hat and fur-trimmed coat add a worldly flair to his wholesome countenance.

The long oak table is set as I left it. Grand-mère would be proud. Glasses, spitting buckets, pens, ink, notebooks. I light the candelabra and begin. “We are going to taste from three regions of the Champagne to help us understand the unique characteristics of each terroir. Chardonnay from Cote-du-Blanc, Pinot Noir from Reims Montagne, Pinot Meunier from Marne Valley.”

“Terroir? We’re tasting the earth?” Louis’s belly laugh echoes through the cavern.

“Terroir is the natural environment that influences the taste of wine: soil, topography, and climate,” Fourneaux chides. “I thought you were a salesman who knew your wine.”

“I prefer to be called a traveler rather than salesman,” Louis bats back.

“I prefer you sell more than travel,” Fourneaux says.

Help me, François, these are your friends. “Gentlemen, if you’ll take your seats.” I fill my gold tastevin under the barrel spigot. The Chardonnay is tinged green and smells too young and sour, but I pour the wine into a carafe anyway.

Next, I sample a cask of Pinot Noir grapes smelling of tilled earth. I hope the earthiness will balance the tartness of the previous wine.

The third cask smells of ripe plums. Pinot Munier juice will bring life to the blend.

Fourneaux watches me. “That tastevin looks like the ones the monks use at the Hautvillers Abbey.”

Holding my treasured cup to the lantern, the gold gleams in the light. “The tastevin belonged to my great-grand-père, Nicolas Ruinart. He learned winemaking from his uncle and Dom Perignon at Hautvillers.”

“Nicolas Ruinart, who opened the first champagne house?” Louis rubs his hands together. “Russian nobles will love that history.”

I pour the three wines into separate glasses. “In the spring, we’ll blend these wines. Then, before we bottle it for a second fermentation, we’ll add a tirage of sugar, yeast, and a touch of brandy.”

“Sacrilege,” Fourneaux says. “Never add anything to the wine that God created.”

Louis tastes the chardonnay and frowns. “Much too sour for Russians.”

“Then the Russians will just have to get used to it,” Fourneaux says.

“We can fix that by adding a liqueur de tirage of yeast, sugar, and wine before the second fermentation,” I say. “Alexandre, remember when Napoleon gave me Chaptal’s manual on winemaking?” I slide the book toward him. “He recommends adding tirage to improve bubbles and sweeten the champagne.”

Fourneaux pushes the book back at me. “If Emperor Napoleon says we should add a tirage, then we must.”

Louis scoffs. “The Little Devil better be good for something since he’s created hell on earth for the rest of us.”

Fourneaux reaches across the table and grabs Louis’s lapel. “Bite your tongue. Emperor Napoleon fights for our liberty, equality, and fraternity.”

“Gentlemen, this is not a battlefield.” I give them the next glasses to occupy their hands. “Taste the Pinot Noir on your left and compare it to the Pinot Meunier on your right.”

Louis takes a sip. “The Pinot Noir is too harsh, and the Meunier tastes like perfume.”

“Which fly bit you?” Fourneaux cocks his head. “Meunier adds texture to flabby wines.”

“Russians don’t mind flabby wine, as long as it’s sweet.” Louis laughs. “Sweeter, the better.”

Fourneaux huffs. “Exactly why we shouldn’t sell wine to Russians. It’s like feeding Filet Mignon to swine.”

“I say, if customers want sweet wine, make it sweet,” Louis counters.

“Andouille, andouille, andouille,” Fourneaux calls him stupid, stupid, stupid.

“You French are insufferable snobs,” Louis says. “I will not insult a Russian lady of the manor by telling her that her taste is unsophisticated. In fact, I carry sugar lumps and bitters with me. If the champagne is sour, I add a lump. If it’s too sweet, I add bitters. If too bland, I add both and a shot of brandy.” He finishes his glass and makes a face. “La vache! That is God awful.”

“Are you ready for the magic?” I mix the three grape varietals together by smell, then pour the cuvee for them to taste.

“You little sorceress,” Louis says, his cheeks flushed. “How’d you make this nectar from the swill we’ve been tasting?”

“The magic is blending all the elements for the best possible result,” I say.

Fourneaux pours more wine. “Why are you so hell-bent on selling champagne in Russia? The Baltic Sea is impossible to get through with the British blockading trade routes. The Brits confiscated three thousand French ships last year.”

“The Russians adore Clicquot champagne,” Louis says. “I can take a big wagonload through Germany, Austria, Poland, and avoid the battlefields.” He brandishes a champagne bottle. “Giving out a bottle here and there along the way…I’ll get into Russia or be damned.”

“They’ll throw you in a Polish jail and keep the wine,” Fourneaux says, jowls flaming.

“If we give into these wars, we may as well close the doors to Clicquot-Fourneaux right now,” I say. “Is that what you want?”

Fourneaux raises his chin. “I sold everything to join this partnership.”

Louis combs his hand through his hair. “I’ve spent five years building customers for Clicquot, and it would be foolish to give that up now.”

“Then, we’ll try shipping by sea and by land,” I say. “I’ve already spoken to an American captain who assures me the British never stops his American ship. He’ll sail through without detection.”

“You can’t trust an American with our wine,” Fourneaux says.

“That’s why you will accompany the shipment, Alexandre,” I say.

“But I’ve never been out of France.” Fourneaux twirls his waxed moustachio.

“Then, it is high time, don’t you think?” I turn to Louis. “As for you, my sister’s husband owns a wagon company. We’ll hire the largest ox-wagons he has, and you’ll be on your way to Russia by the end of the month.”

“Derjenige, der die Piper spielt, schafft an,” Louis says.

I hold my hand to my ear. “My German is not so good.”

“The one who pays the piper calls the tune.”

From their bright eyes and relaxed smiles, I see the wine is working. I hold up my glass for a toast. “Then it’s settled. The success of Clicquot-Fourneaux lies solidly on both of your shoulders.”

Fourneaux points to my nose. “And Le Nez.”

Louis tweaks my nose, and we laugh. The laughter brings more toasting, and more toasting brings more laughter; our excitement rises like bubbles in our champagne.

But, soon enough, I realize I am here with François’s best friends, and he is not. My laughter fizzles with the candlewicks.

***

The two weeks preparing the Russian shipments keep us busy from daybreak to sunset. Louis never leaves my side, pitching in at the crayères and packing barn. After our strenuous days, I invite him to stay for dinner before he beds at the Cockatrice, the German Tavern he loves so much.

I question him about the long treacherous road to St. Petersburg and all the nobles and royals he’ll call upon along the way. His eagerness and bluster thrill me, though I feel dreary by comparison. Louis is made for the adventure of the road, and it for him, while my world revolves around the comforting cycle of winemaking, from budbreak to harvest, crushing grapes to blending wines, bottling to shipping. We couldn’t be more different, and yet, when I watch his ox wagons embark for Russia, my sinuses prickle something terrible to see him go.

***

25

A cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents.

When given a horse, don’t look at their teeth.

Fourneaux’s trip to Amsterdam, which should have taken a few months, turns into a year. I have not received so much as a letter from him, which I suspect is because he cannot write. Or read, for that matter. But we agreed he’d send payment for the champagne shipment to pay outstanding bills, and our bank account is dwindling by the day.

Unpaid bills aren’t the only thing I juggle like the jugglers at the Amphithéâtre Anglais, where I took Mentine on my last visit to Paris. Managing the vineyards, the winemaking, and the selling tumble through my brain day and night. Blazing torches, swirling and smoking, never knowing whether I will catch the flame or the stick. Drop a torch and burn my dreams to the ground.

Urgent bills pile my desk in Reims from which I must choose one or two to pay. Instead, I procrastinate, writing Mentine a letter urging her to concentrate on her studies at the convent. The nuns tell me she tends to daydream. She sends me detailed drawings of fine white horses with manes flying. Truly amazing since my drawing amounts to stick figures.

“Work hard on your studies this year, Mentine,” I write. “And, perhaps we can get you a horse for your birthday.” Folding the letter, I drip hot wax from a taper and emboss it with the anchor engraved on my tastevin: clarity and courage.

It will be challenging to find a horse for Mentine when the Grande Armée sweeps through Reims regularly to confiscate horses for the wars. Another strike against Napoleon in my mind, though Papa says I’m unpatriotic. How can Napoleon expect France to thrive when he sends our men and horses to war? Before Napoleon shut down the newspapers, they reported a million Frenchmen killed in his battles. How many more men are dead now? When does the fight for liberty, equality, and fraternity cost too much?

Felix sleeps in the patch of sun on my desk as I pay the bills. An innocent fly lands, and he spears it with sharp claws and pops it in his mouth. Lizards, mice, and insects are not safe when Felix is on the prowl. I appreciate his talent since I’m not fond of varmints myself.

Lizzette brings a tray of Madeleines and café au lait in Limoges china, a cup for me, and a saucer for Felix, who wastes no time lapping it up. This house feels more like home now that Lizzette’s back, returning yesterday from Jelgava, Russia, visiting her cousin, who never stays in one place long.

“I missed you while you were gone,” I say. The truth is, I worried she wouldn’t come back. She’s so loyal to him. I sip my creamy coffee, smelling of cinnamon and freshly roasted coffee beans. “How was your cousin?”

She clucks her tongue. “Corpulent, gouty, and bickering with his wife about her lady-in-waiting who she can’t live without.” She whistles to the side of her mouth. “But, I can’t abandon him since he brought me to the Versailles court when no one cared about an old Trobairitz like me.”

“Intriguing,” I say, hoping she’ll say more, but she starts singing in her tremulous voice and flutters her feather duster behind the damask draperies.

“Why doesn’t your cousin come to visit you here? He seems to like to travel.” I bite into a fresh Madeleine; the smell of sugar and butter brings a smile to my lips.

“He’d be killed if he comes back while Napoleon is in power.” She flicks dust off the spines of books François and I collected, philosophy, literature, and agriculture. Felix jumps to catch the dust motes she brings out of hiding, dancing like skeletons in the light.

My nose starts to itch and tingle. “Who is your cousin? I never thought to ask his name. Maybe I’ve heard of him.”

Lizzette presses her forefinger to her mouth, tiptoes to the door, and peeks out. When she returns, she whispers in my ear. “We must not speak of this.” Reaching in her cleaning basket, she hands me a small parcel. “I almost forgot, this arrived from St. Petersburg.”

“Why is the seal broken?”

“The wax must have frozen.” Lizzette hurries out of my office, running from further questions. I remind myself that Lizzette’s business is her own, no matter how intriguing.

Digging my letter knife into the package, I gasp at the gorgeous pair of turquoise brocade slippers with jeweled dragonflies adorning the toes. So long since I received such a special gift. Underneath them is a letter and a dozen champagne orders from Louis.

November 15, 1806

St. Petersburg, Russia

Dear Sorceress with the magical nose,

You must send a new shipment forthwith before I run out of supply. The Clicquot name is fast becoming Russia’s favorite champagne. Make it as sweet as you dare for the Russians, and they’ll drink it from these slippers!

The gods have shined on us. The Tsar and his wife have given birth to Grand Duchess Elizabeth Alexandrovna and the aristocracy has gone mad for Clicquot-Fourneaux. (Though rumor has it, the newborn is not the tsar’s child, but of his wife’s lover!)

I laugh. Louis is a great gossip. He trades his juicy tidbits with nobility; the juicier his gossip, the more champagne they buy. I continue reading.

Despite the Fourth Coalition War, aristocrats welcome me into their homes, still obsessed with all things French. Prussia has joined Russia and England against France, so pray the coalition is victorious, so we can get back to selling wine. (If the Little Devil’s spies intercept this letter, I’ll be shot.)

From what I hear, Tsar Alexander rendezvoused with Napoleon on the Neman River. If all went well, it would be extremely fortuitous for Clicquot-Fourneaux. In fact, the underground newspapers here speak of little else but the budding romance between the emperors. Oh là là! Love is in the air! All the better for Clicquot-Fourneaux!

A little Russian gossip for your dreams. Cheers, Sorceress.

Your devoted traveler,

Louis Bohne

His drawing is hysterically lewd and makes me laugh aloud: Napoleon and Tsar Alexander locking lips, tiny hearts floating up from their mouths like buzzing bees.

Ah, Louis. What would I do without his spirit and humor? Fanning the orders on my desk, I see they are substantial and prestigious, as well. The sooner they ship, the faster we’ll be paid and take care of these bills. I rush out to prepare the champagne to ship.

***

My mother-in-law, Catherine-Françoise, dies of fever. Philippe shuts his doors to the world. His grief is so great. I can’t blame him, but I miss our breakfasts discussing everyday issues about the winery: the glass blowers, cork makers, and barrel coopers. Now I must rely solely on my own judgment. At first, I ask myself what François would say, but it makes me too sad as time goes on.

***

Fourneaux finally returns to my office in Reims, his old-fashioned pantaloons and long coat smell of mice and mildew. His hair has turned ghost white, his skin withered like grapes left too long on the vine. Taking off his hare-felt hat, he collapses into a leather chair across from my desk, beaten and angry.

I fetch a bottle of aged champagne from my icebox and serve us coupes. “What is it Napoleon said? In victory, you deserve champagne. In defeat, you need it.” I savor the nutty, robust aroma, just as Fourneaux likes his champagne.

But he doesn’t seem to notice as he gulps it down. “I was trapped in Amsterdam when The British Royal Navy shut down the port.”

I pour him more. “So, you never sent the shipment on to Russia?”

He guzzles the champagne. “Did you hear what I said? The port was closed.”

I pour champagne in Felix’s saucer, and Fourneaux scoffs in disgust.

“They stranded our ship in the beating sun for weeks.” He grabs the bottle and serves himself. “I had no choice but to move our wine to a warehouse. The warehouse was so stifling; the wine grew revolting ropes of dead yeast.”

Trying to keep my anger in check, I pet the white star of fur on Felix’s chest. “The champagne was perfect when it left here. Surely it didn’t all go bad.”

Fourneaux chokes, and champagne spurts from his nose. “Damn it, Barbe-Nicole. You can’t blame me for this catastrophe. This disaster lies squarely in your lap.” He pats his face furiously with his handkerchief. “Thousands of bottles broke in the heat or spoiled. Only a couple hundred were saleable, for which I got pennies on the dollar.” His jowls shake like a French bulldog.

“Fifty-thousand bottles?” Can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“I nearly died getting out of there.” He fills his glass again. “The captain waited two weeks for the wind to be in the right quarter. Finally, we set sail, but we were hardly out of the harbor when the wind changed. This went on for days, making no headway.” Setting aside the glass, he drinks straight from the bottle. “A terrible storm blasted throughout the night. Couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. We set off a small canon for help, but we were too far from land. Huge waves broke across the ship, and I was sure we would sink. But we stalled on a sandbar. I thought we were safe when we saw a ship approaching, but they were pirates. They stripped me of every guilder I made in Amsterdam.” He pounds the bottle down on my desk.

“Shipping champagne by sea was our worse choice, after all,” I say, petting Felix.

He blinks at me. “When did you get that cat? I am deathly allergic.” He pushes up from the leather chair, puts on his hat, and tramps out of my office.

Felix’s long ears twitch as if he’s heard more than he cares to.

“Me, too, Felix. But he’s my partner.” Setting him down, I run outside to find Fourneaux, spotting him near his buggy. A cold wind blows off his hat, tumbling along Rue Hospital. He chases it, grumbling, and I catch up to him.

“You were brave to take the risk, and it failed,” I say. “But it is not the end of our business. I’ve already sent another wagonload of champagne to Louis in Russia.”

“You took the risk. You failed.” He squashes the hat on his head. “You used me like a pawn in a chess game.” He returns to his buggy and climbs up to the driver’s bench. “I lived a simple life before you, Barbe-Nicole. Keeping my head down, minding the grapes, making wine. I was content until my wife died. Then you walked into my life, and I wanted something again. But you crushed my desire like a snail under your beautiful foot.” He stares at my dragonfly slippers. “You made me believe we could do anything with Clicquot-Fourneaux...together. But, it’s all about you. You don’t do anything together.” He snaps his reins, and the horses take off in a cloud of dust.

The dust irritates my sensitive nose into a sneezing fit. I pushed Fourneaux beyond his breaking point, like I did François, and look what happened to him.

***

26

Faire passer un chameau par la chas d’une aiguille.

Like trying to fit a camel through the eye of a needle.

The house has been too lonely with Mentine at the convent. Letters are a poor substitute for her hugs, her orange-blossom scent, her thoughts that flit from mind to mouth without filter. I can’t wait to see her face when she sees how I decorated for the holidays. For the first time since François passed, I hung holly wreaths, spread red tablecloths, tied plaid ribbons on the chairs. I found these tin candle lanterns with cutouts on the sides to cast stars onto the walls. And, Mentine’s biggest surprise will be Felix, who she hasn’t met yet since she stays at Hotel Ponsardin when she comes home.

When I pick Mentine up from the stagecoach station, she looks like she’s grown three inches. She has only a small hand trunk since she left her uniforms at the convent.

“Oh, Mentine, I missed you so much.” Hugging her, I kiss both cheeks, and we walk out into the snow, falling heavier than earlier.

“I can’t wait to see Mémé.” Mentine skips in the snow, her cheeks bright, her hands in a rabbit fur muff.

“You can see Mémé tomorrow,” I say. “I thought we’d spend tonight at our house. Lizzette left us cassoulet for dinner.”

“Just the two of us?” She frowns and kicks her toe into the snow.

“Won’t that be nice?” I say. “I haven’t seen you in months, and it gives us a chance to catch up before we join everyone.” Felix will brighten her mood.

We have only a few blocks to walk home from the stage station, but the snow is falling so hard it’s difficult to tell where we are exactly. When I get my bearings, I see we’re close to Ponsardin Woolens, then we’ll pass the hospital on the corner, and our house is on the adjacent street.

The snow is so thick, I barely make out the armée wagons lined up outside Ponsardin Woolens, with a crowd of people bustling around. They must be picking up uniforms. Papa directs workers in a formal top hat, coat flapping open over his holiday vest of emerald green.

The smell of old blood hits me, cold and coagulated. The odor scours out my sinuses.

“Grand-père!” Mentine runs toward Papa, weaving between the buggies and carriages on the street, and hugs him.

But something is not right. His face is stricken white, and his jaw clenched, as when he faced the murderous mobs of the revolution. That strange look of terror and resolve. He grips Mentine’s shoulders and turns her away from the wagons. “Barbe-Nicole, take her back to Hotel Ponsardin.”

Then I see behind him. Military wagons are piled with muddy, wounded soldiers, bleeding profusely, missing arms and others, legs, some moaning, and others deadly still. Looks as if they loaded the wagon on the battlefield and brought them here. Ponsardin employees help nurses in blue capes carry the bloody soldiers into the hospital.

I grab Mentine’s arm and pull her away from the gruesome scene. “Come with me, Mentine.”

“I want to stay with Grand-père.”

He crouches down and holds her hands. “Go with your maman. I’ll meet you at Hotel Ponsardin when I’m finished.”

Two nurses carry a stretcher into the hospital. The soldier’s arms and legs have been severed, leaving bloody stumps of nerves and muscles.

Mentine screams. I walk her quickly across the street; her bulging eyes stare back at the wagon. You can’t unsee this horror. How François suffered from the sights, sounds, and smells of battle, haunting him for the rest of his life.

I turn Mentine’s chin to mine and pull up her hood around her face. “Let’s go see Mémé.” Encircling my arm around her, I start walking. We turn the corner, and sleet whips into our faces.

“How did those men get hurt, Maman?

“Fighting for Napoleon.”

She nods solemnly. “Liberty, equality, fraternity?”

My stomach churns. “Where did you hear that?”

“The plaque in our classroom has Emperor Napoleon’s face with those words underneath.”

“I see,” I say, but I don’t. How does the convent condone this? I thought she was safe there. But with Napoleon, nowhere feels safe anymore.

***

After dinner with Mémé and the cousins, I think I did the right thing bringing Mentine to Hotel Ponsardin, despite my empty decorated house. I put her to bed and lie beside her, rubbing her back until I smell her clover breath reminiscent of François’s. I let my eyelids close but listen for Papa’s return.

Much later, I hear the rattle of the key in the lock and squeal of the door. I take the back stairs down to the library. Papa has taken off his top hat, his long white hair matted and dripping, his chest heaving. His hands shake as he pours St. Germaine. “Join me for a nightcap, mon chou?”

I nod and curl up in Grand-mère’s chair by the hearth. It’s been too long since I’ve spent time in here, with its rolling library ladder I used to climb and listen to the grown-ups talk.

Papa hands me a St. Germaine, toasts au santé, and we drink the elderberry liqueur. Sweet herbal flowers.

“Do you remember my stories of Mother Holle, goddess of the dead? She owns the elderberry bush.” He raises his glass to the flames. “May those who died tonight rest peacefully in her arms.”

“You told me when snow falls, it’s Mother Holle shaking out her feather bed.”

He nods slowly.

“What took so long to get home?” I throw a log on the coals.

“After we carried the dead and wounded soldiers into the hospital, Napoleon ordered we load up the wagons with finished uniforms to bring them back to the war front.” He drinks and sighs. “He’s efficient if not sentimental.”

“That’s disgusting, Papa. Each uniform you make sends another soldier to his death. How can you live with that?”

He sucks his cheek. “If we don’t make the uniforms, someone else will. We employ a thousand women and children. Would you rather I let them starve on principle?”

I slide my tastevin on its chain. “How does killing men bring us liberty?”

The new log catches fire, flames leaping.

He rubs the back of his neck. “How is Mentine?”

“How can she possibly be after seeing that horrendous scene? How can any of us be all right?” I pick up the lace bookmark on Grand-mère’s loom, the last thing she made, untouched after all these years.

“With Mentine…have you seen any signs of François’s….” He drinks his liqueur.

“No, Papa. Mentine is not crazy. The world is crazy.” Lifting the bookmark, I see the threads still attached to the loom. “May I take this?”

“Leave it alone.” He pours us more St. Germaine. “Your Maman touches that bookmark every time she comes in here.”

“But she never cared a whit for Grand-mère’s lacemaking.” I put it down on the loom.

“I’m sorry mon chou.” He shakes his head, wearily. “We can never understand our parents, but I want you to know, I’m doing all I can in this situation with Napoleon.” His tented eyes plead for mercy. “Can you trust me?”

“Not sure you want to hear my answer.” Papa is a chameleon, changing political views to reap the rewards. “I trust that you’re always thinking of your family and employees.” I should stop there, risking our relationship for my beliefs. “But, I hate your allegiance to Napoleon. He is evil, Papa, and it pains me you don’t see that.”

He tamps tobacco into his pipe and lights it. The smoke smells of my father, protective, wily, devoted. How can he support Napoleon Bonaparte? I wait for his answer, but he pours more St. Germaine and puffs his pipe. What could he say? Politics is a moving target with no bullseye of truth, breaking up more families than uniting them. The silence stretches between us as we finish the bottle and watch the fire burn to orange embers. I rise and kiss him on the cheek.

“Someone has to beat the Little Devil, Papa. He’s killing our men and our trade. He will stop at nothing to rule Europe, and we pay the price.”

***

Maman insists I dress up for New Year’s Eve, so I stop by my house to look through my closet. I call for Felix, but he doesn’t come. Worried about him freezing in the snow, I call outside but hear no mewing. Turning back into the dark house, I light the lantern, not a soul to greet me. Lizzette took a holiday to visit her cousin, who has moved again. God help them. I sympathize with the plight of French royals and nobles forced to exile outside of France, moving their families every few years to avoid Napoleon’s wars. We Ponsardins would have met that fate if Papa hadn’t become a Jacobin. His switch of allegiance saved our lives.

Another package from Louis awaits me on my desk. I hate to think of him alone on the road on the holidays when he could have been here. The package smells of vodka, fried potatoes, and disappointment, lodging in my chest like a heavy cold. Inside, there’s a present wrapped in red paper, a letter and one of his drawings.

“Do not mention HIS NAME in your letters if you don’t want to compromise my life further than it is already. As a traveler for a French company, they suspected me of being a French spy and held me in jail for a month. I paid for my freedom with a case of champagne. Your shipment of wine to St. Petersburg was worth all your valiant efforts and the guards sing praises of Clicquot.

Though the political climate is unfavorable, I am paying great attention to our customers. Too much lousy wine has been pawned off here by travelers, and I want our customers to trust that Clicquot-Fourneaux will be of the very best quality.

I have but one request. Too many bottles are arriving with a long spiraling snake of yeast. I cannot sell it for fear of frightening our customers. And even more importantly, our champagne must have a hearty sparkle. Only the English like flat, sour champagne. I entrust this complicated problem to your hands, as you seem to turn every problem into an opportunity, my dear Barbe-Nicole.”

Imprisoned on my account, after all he’s done to expand our business. My heart aches for his suffering. Yet, despite his torment, he proposes a plan to continue selling Clicquot champagne. His sacrifice and loyalty arouse in me new devotion to our success.

Louis must have received the book I sent because he drew himself as Gulliver with hundreds of tiny Napoleons trussing his body with butcher string and spearing him with olive forks.

Dipping the pen in the inkwell, I start to write.

I will slay that horrible snake if it is my last act on earth. We can’t give up, now, Louis. If we do, the Little Devil wins. You have given your all to our fledgling champagne company, establishing accounts and accomplishing tremendous sales. The Little Devil cannot evade the formidable powers of the European monarchs forever.

Dripping wax on the letter, I press my tastevin to emboss the Clicquot anchor. Our battle is no longer selling champagne but beating Napoleon at his wicked game.

***

The challenges we face in this new year will take all the clarity and courage I can muster. Le Réveillon. The Awakening.

But first, we celebrate. This evening, my family will gather in the Grand Salon, as Maman calls the ballroom, where the children will open presents. My present to Mentine will be the biggest surprise of all.

Grabbing apples from the pantry, I make my way to the Ponsardin stables, where I’ve been hiding my surprise for a week now. Our new beauty stomps and whinnies when she senses me nearing her stall, uneasy in her strange surroundings. I offer an apple, and she takes it, nickering when I stroke her long mane. She smells of the bogs and marshes of the Rhone delta.

Since most of the horses have been seized for the armée, I had to look farther afield. Lizzette sent a letter to her uncle in the south of France, who tames Camargues. For thousands of years, these small horses thrived in the wild, prized for stamina and agility. None of these traits will mean a fig to Mentine, but Camargue horses are stunning with gleaming white hair over black skin, giving her a shimmery silver coat that Mentine will swoon over. Feeding the Camargue the rest of the apples, I brush her coat to a luster. When I’m finished, I close the stall gate, but the latch is loose, in need of repair. One more thing that won’t get done around here.

My house is so quiet I hear the mantel clock ticking. I dress in Josephine’s style, flowing Roman muslin gown tied with a blue-gray ribbon to match my eyes. Not so much because Maman will approve, but because the free-flowing skirt will let me enjoy my dinner. My hand grazes François’s books, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Rousseau, and the more practical volumes on grape growing and winemaking that I’ve used so much they’re dog-eared. François was healthy and happy our last Le Réveillon together, five years ago already. We were in Bouzy and drove the buggy up on the hill. Cuddled under wool blankets, we watched for shooting stars and made wishes for our new company. At midnight, we kissed and got swept away, making love under the stars. How could we know that love is as ephemeral as shooting stars, ablaze one moment and snuffed cold in the next?

Under the chandeliers of the Grand Salon, we feast on lobster, oysters, foie gras, and turkey with chestnuts. Maman holds court at one end of the long table and Papa at the other, with Clementine’s Baron. My parents beam as if they won a grand prize, and I think they have, witnessing the wealth and warmth of our family when so many are suffering across Europe.

I’m glad I dressed for comfort because I’m about the burst. Jean-Baptiste pulls out my chair and accompanies me to the Louis XVI bar, sitting on gilded bar stools. The rest of the adults claim velvet chairs flanking the hearth. The cousins shake and poke at the gifts around the giant fir tree lit with candles.

Jean-Baptiste gazes lovingly at his three-year-old, whose blonde curls have never been touched by scissors.

“Your son resembles you when you were little,” I tell him, wondering how he feels raising a child unrelated by blood. “It’s amazing. He has all your mischievous expressions, too. Why didn’t Therese come tonight?”

“Therese said not to expect her until tomorrow. I’ll bet my corset she’s taken a new lover.” He unbuttons a vest button that otherwise would have popped off.

Clementine joins us, taking my arm. “I wish I could see you more often, but the estate keeps me so busy.”

The cousins chase past us, singing Auld Lang Syne at the top of their screechy voices. Mentine is never so happy as she is with her cousins. Wait until they see her horse.

“Ah, youth. Were we ever that carefree?” Jean-Baptiste says.

Clementine swats him with her Parisian handbag. “Speak for yourself; I’m not even twenty-five.”

He sniggers. “But, you married an old man.”

The Baron puffs a cigar with Papa, arguing about whether Napoleon is genius or insane. “And you have four children,” he says. “That’s ancient in my book.”

Clementine flushes bright red and walks away. “Maman, let me help you pass out gifts.”

“No need to be nasty, Jean-Baptiste,” I say. “None of us picks our fate, present company included.”

“Touché, mon lapin. We need another drink.”

Plunging my hand into the oversized ice bucket, I retrieve the champagne and pour it for us. “Have you made your resolutions for Le Réveillon?” I clink his coupe.

“You are looking at it.” He raises his glass. “I resolve to drink more champagne.”

“If everyone made that resolution, Clicquot-Fourneaux would not be in such dire shape.”

“I thought your winery was doing well,” he says.

“Since Russia declared war on France, sales have dropped.”

“My thread business is booming with armée uniforms,” he says.

Maman and Clementine finish handing out presents, and the children tear off the wrappings, laughing and screaming. Beautiful dollhouses and dolls for the girls, snow sleds for the boys. Maman smiles as she watches them, and her white powder mask cracks.

Later, I let Mentine open the gift Louis sent us, reading his note.

These bracelets are Amber, which is fossilized resin from ancient Baltic forests. The resin traps nature’s treasures of seeds, leaves, feathers, and insects inside for eternity. I hope you girls enjoy them. --Louis

The bracelets emit a spicy aroma. Clasping one on Mentine’s delicate wrist and one on myself, we hunt for the hidden enclosures, relishing the smallest mustard seed and gnat. Curiously, he sent a third bracelet, which I slip into my pocket.

Mentine runs off to show her cousins.

“How is your mysterious traveler?” Jean-Baptiste drums his crimson fingernails on my arm.

“The Russians imprisoned him as a French spy. Making sales is tougher than ever with every country joining the coalition against France.”

Jean-Baptiste tsks his tongue and pours me fresh champagne.

“The winery is just not the same without François to share it with me.” I sigh.

“At least you have Fourneaux.”

I scoff. “He’s not speaking to me after I called Napoleon a Little Devil in our last argument.”

“Napoleon is a hero,” Jean-Baptiste says.

His statement floors me. “Since when do you like Napoleon?”

He shields his mouth with his scarlet manicure. “Since the Napoleon Code dictated that certain private acts by private individuals are not subject to state intervention. Thanks to Napoleon, sodomy is no longer punishable as a criminal act.”

“I am relieved, for your sake. As Shakespeare said, ‘Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabouts: misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.’”

“You know I’m fond of strange bedfellows.” He tweaks my nose.

At the stroke of midnight, all the clocks in Hotel Ponsardin start to chime. Not all together of course, since some are slow and some fast. The joyous sound brings us together in a circle, and we hold hands, counting down to midnight. Mentine leads her cousins in counting in English she learned at the convent. With the final stroke of the clock, we kiss each cheek, right and left, then back again, two more times. Everyone is kissing and hugging when the floor begins shaking violently, the chandelier swaying, the glasses falling over on the table.

Papa runs outside. The Baron’s jaw hangs open. Clementine takes her children under her wing. Mentine stands alone on the floor, eyes wild and panicked.

I hold my arms out. “Come here, darling. It will be all right.” She slams her tiny body to mine, her fragile shoulders trembling.

The Baron pushes open the window and leans out. The sounds terrify us: yelling, screaming, stomping, snorting, whinnying. The smell of horse sweat overwhelms me, the stench of panic. I try to leave Mentine with Jean-Baptist, but she will not leave my side. Reluctantly, I bring her with me to the front portico beside Papa. Soldiers stampede horses through the cobblestone streets. Mentine’s eyes are wide with fright.

“Armée raid again,” Papa says. “Took the horses I use to transport wool into the mills.”

“No, not the horses.” Panicked, I take Mentine by the hand and run to the stable, my heart filled with dread. Every stall is empty, including the last one with the broken latch. My stomach plunges. “Your present…” I cannot bear to tell her the horse is gone.

Felix yowls loudly and sticks his head out of the Camargue’s stall, his gold-green eyes flashing. He struts toward us.

“Oh, Maman! You got me a matagot.” Mentine crouches down, and Felix jumps in her arms, his long ears twitching.

“Pardon me?” Oh, Mentine thinks the matagot is her present.

“Oh, Maman, I wished and hoped for a matagot my whole life. Does he have a name?” She pets him, and he rubs against her bracelet. Suddenly, I realize Louis sent the third bracelet for him.

“His name is Felix.” I clasp the bracelet around his neck. “He’s from Russia.”

Mentine brings him to her face and snuggles. “Felix is so handsome, Maman. Is my matagot enchanted like Papa said?” Her blue eyes plead to hang on to her father’s stories.

“Absolutely,” I say. “So, remember what you have to do?”

“Come on Felix, let’s go feed you chicken and cream.” Mentine lifts him, and we walk out the stable door. “I miss Papa. I wish we were a family again.”

“So do I, sweetheart.” The words catch in my throat.

***

27

Chacun voit midi a sa porte

Everyone sees noon at his doorstep.

The year was a disaster for Clicquot-Fourneaux with the fifth coalition war, Alexandre’s catastrophe in Amsterdam, and Louis fleeing Russia. But, Louis went on to open new accounts in Germany, Poland, and Prussia, saving us from closing the doors. I invite the partners to dinner to ease tensions between us. I am pleased Philippe agrees to come since he would not join us for the holidays.

Fourneaux tastes the first champagne, an experiment of mine. “What’s this, Barbe-Nicole? It has no body, no depth.” He pops his fourth canape in his mouth, but it falls to the floor, and Felix pounces on the morsel.

Holding up my glass, the tiniest bubbles dance to the top and release the most delicate scent of budbreak. “I call it free-run champagne, made from Chardonnay grapes loaded into the press and allowing their weight to extract the juice.”

Philippe tries it and smiles. “Light as angel’s wings.”

His voice sounds so much like François’s, my throat constricts. I couldn’t speak if I wanted to. Sipping my champagne, I think how he would have enjoyed the freshness.

After aperitifs, we move to the dining table for twelve, which I convinced François we had to have, imagining our families gathered around us for Sunday dinners. Now, the table serves as a constant reminder of how alone I am.

Lizzette did her best to make it festive, setting three places at one end. The Limoges china that Philippe and Catherine-Françoise gave us as a wedding present, gleams. The silver is polished, the candelabras lit. A glorious arrangement of firethorn berries in a silver punch bowl enlivens the center of the table. Leave it to Lizzette to find beauty in the dead of January.

She serves us escargot in antique dishes with six indentations for the shells. Philippe and Fourneaux dig in with two-pronged forks and wash the snails down with champagne. I forgo the nasty slugs—the smell of the slimy things cannot hide behind a mask of garlic and butter.

As the men slurp their escargot, I report on our business. “Despite all the hardships of the last year, we actually doubled our sales, selling one hundred and thirty thousand bottles in 1806. Louis Bohne sold the lion’s share of that. We owe him a debt of gratitude.”

Philippe clinks my glass. “I wish to toast François, who, despite my best judgment, had the sense to hire Louis Bohne.”

Pressure builds behind my eyes, threatening unwanted tears. Felix jumps to my rescue, rubbing against me, and I hold him close, grateful for the distraction.

Philippe pats my arm. “François would be proud of his clever wife.”

Fourneaux harrumphs. “Very clever, indeed, Barbe-Nicole. So clever, in fact, I just figured it out. You sent me to Amsterdam to make a buffoon out of me in favor of Louis Bohne.”

“Alexandre, I would never do such a thing.” He’s complained about that trip since he got back, and I’m tired of hearing it. “We certainly didn’t have an extra fifty thousand bottles to lose.”

Fourneaux grips the table and bellows at the top of his lungs. “You are just like your father, twisting the truth to fit your version. Bohne is your golden boy, and I am a buffoon.”

Felix leaps from my lap to Fourneaux’s plate, batting an escargot down the table, whacking it to and fro.

Fourneaux pushes away from the table, his chair tippling on hind legs. Felix pounces on him, claws bared, blood springing from the punctures in his arm. His chair tips too far back, and I slam my body against it to keep him upright. Fourneaux lurches forward, upsetting his antique plate. Snail shells roll like marbles over the table. Felix jumps and bats them around, eating the oily remains.

Fourneaux throws his napkin into the garlic butter, poking his finger at me and sputtering, so furious, no actual words leave his mouth. He stamps out as Felix gobbles the last snails.

Fed up with Fourneaux’s bluster, tantrum leaves me cold. “Well, Felix, you showed him, didn’t you?” He licks his paws smugly, his mission complete. “Enough mischief for tonight.” I put him out like I should have from the beginning, returning to Philippe.

“I had no idea this evening would be so entertaining.” He wipes his mouth with the napkin.

“That’s the last we’ll see of Fourneaux, I’m afraid.”

“He has to come back, he’s under contract.”

Lizzette comes to take our plates and sees the mess. “The snails were a hit, I take it?” She scoops up shells and plates and lays a fresh tablecloth. “Will Monsieur Fourneaux be returning for the next course?”

“I’m afraid not. He’s allergic to matagots,” I tell her.

Lizzette serves the coq au vin. I’m grateful to eat dinner in peace, though I feel a touch of remorse when I open the next champagne. Fourneaux would have loved the full-bodied fruitiness. “Blanc de Noir, from Pinot Noir grapes on Reims Montagne.” I serve the heady brew.

“You have to forgive Alexandre. We old codgers are not used to women like you.” Philippe sips his champagne. “I’m baffled how you’ve expanded the business ten-fold since I had it.” He moves the chicken leg around on his plate. “The world has passed me by.”

“Philippe, it’s not good for you to be alone so much. You have to get out and see people.”

“I lived my life,” he says, shaking his balding head. “I was there with your father when Louis XVI was crowned in Reims Cathedral. When revolutionaries cut off his head, they may have well cut off mine, too. But I had to protect François and my wife from the Reign of Terror. Now France is ruled by a Corsican minotaur who will rule Europe no matter how many Frenchmen he sacrifices.” Dropping his head back, he stares at a spider weaving a web on the crown molding.

I can’t disagree, but I see the pain it causes him. Felix jumps on my lap, and I wonder how he got in since the door is still closed. He circles around and around into a ball.

“François always wanted a black cat,” Philippe says. “Had some fool notion they were magic.” He wipes his eyes under his glasses. “Memories are all we have left.”

I pat his hand. “We still so much to live for, Philippe. Look at the year we’ve had. We should be celebrating.”

But Philippe leaves before the cream puffs that Lizzette finished with hardened caramel threads like the Croquembouche at our wedding. A memory so vivid it makes me smile. Perhaps Philippe is right. As I bite into the pastry cream, it escapes out the other side, leaving me with an empty shell. What good is success if I can’t share it? I’m not even thirty years old, with at least as many years ahead of me. I spoon the cream back into the puff and take a big bite. But not even the cream and sugar can soothe my loneliness.

***

Fourneaux insists on taking charge of the wine blending which I love, forbidding me to disturb him or even venture into his crayère--which I own, so how does that figure? He’s the winemaker, he says, and I’m the business manager. Now that I know he can’t read or write, it makes sense for me to handle the purchasing, billing, and shipping, as much as I miss that mystical alchemy of blending wines until I achieve just the right smell and taste. My grand-mère would be rolling in her grave if she knew Le Nez is going to waste.

It has taken all week to pack the latest wagonload for Louis, five thousand bottles in wooden crates, cradled with straw. Repeatedly, I remind the waggoneer to avoid the divots and bumps in the road. As the wagon pulls away, Fourneaux comes up from the crayère, wiping his brow.

“You allowed them to harvest from Verzenay too early.” His boot kicks the straw bale. “The sour grapes are ruining the blending.”

Black clouds rolled in the day we picked the Verzenay grapes. “The rains were coming. We had to pick them or lose them to mold.”

“Well, the juice is too green to mix with anything.” His finger circles the rim of the barrel.

“May I have a smell?”

His burly shoulders shrug. “It’s your mistake. It’s only right that you should fix it.”

Following him into the cavern, my nose prickles with the mineral tang of the chiseled chalk walls, toasted oak barrels, the fermenting wine. The smells cast a net of nostalgia: François and I, as children, feeling our way through the caves with our baguette and cheese, helping ourselves to wine out of spouts in the barrels.

A dozen carafes are labeled with Fourneaux’s strange symbols for vineyards and years that only he can understand. My eyes adjust to the dim light of the lanterns. “So, this is the Verzenay Pinot Noir?” Pouring some into my tastevin and swirling, I smell the spicy notes of fennel and capsicum. As I taste, my tongue shrivels with a sour, bitter flavor. “Oooo. I see what you mean.” Pinching off a piece of baguette to cleanse my palate, I try the next carafe. “Ah, the chardonnay from Bouzy.”

Fourneaux stiffens. “How do you know it’s from Bouzy?”

“The grapes smell like dried apricots in Bouzy.”

I try many different blends using various wines from each of our vineyards and even vintages from the past, tasting as I go. Time stands still as I experiment, making notes. At last, I am satisfied and offer a taste to Fourneaux.

When he tastes it, his shoulders relax, and his breath deepens. “This is it, Barbe-Nicole. Pure nectar.”

I sample it again. “Still needs something.” Lifting my skirts to avoid the spring water on the cave floor, I find a barrel from ten years ago, smelling of vanilla and raisins and the mustiness of age. Using my tastevin, I pour a cup into the last blend and swirl the carafe.

Fourneaux rolls the wine over his tongue and sides of his mouth and lets it rest at the back of his throat before swallowing. His eyes meet mine, unfathomable and intense. He sets the glass down. “How did you do that?” He grasps my hand. “I was chasing my tail trying to make something out of it.”

I tap the side of my nose. “Le Nez is my curse and my gift, depending who you ask. It’s not something I question anymore, it’s just me.”

Over the next week, with Fourneaux sitting at the table and watching me work, I blend and taste, taste and blend. By Saturday, the blends are finished.

“Sit down, you look exhausted.” He opens an aged bottle, and I take a seat.

The cuvées turned out so well, I should feel wonderful, but I feel as worn out as my fancy tooled leather boots that have become stained by groundwater and wine.

As he pours, the last breath of lamp oil illuminates his eyes. “We make a good team, you and I,” he says as if we’ve done it together.

But he’d perched on his bench all week, goading me to find the right wines to save my mistakes. Nothing like the partnership I had with François.

Setting down my glass, I push myself up. “I still have invoices to prepare and send out.”

He pats the bench next to him. “It doesn’t have to be all work and no play.”

“I trust you’ll be able to clean this up.” Climbing the stair, I’m irritated and exhausted but satisfied with my blends.

***

28

Avaler des couleuvres.

To eat grass snakes.

Papa, Maman, Jean-Baptiste, and I watch Emperor Napoleon’s elaborate procession from the Palace of Tau terrace as he arrives to judge the Imperial Champagne competition. The winner will be granted a year’s contract with the Tuileries, his royal residence in Paris. The prospect has my nose tuned up, and I scratch my palms to calm my nerves. The Emperor should be impressed with the improvement in our champagne, and I know he will admire my creative display. If Fourneaux comes through with his part, we should win hands-down, allowing us to sell off our glut of inventory and buy new barrels which we can’t afford.

Trumpets blast, and crowds cheer. The sound is deafening, but the smell worse, with hordes of unwashed farmers and factory workers, no toilet facilities, and horses smearing the road with dung. I thrust Lizzette’s fresh lavender sachet to my itchy nose.

A long parade of carriages tosses out Napoleon medals to thousands of Reims’ citizens. The same treasured medal the Emperor awarded François for saving his life is thrown like candy at the Bastille Day parade.

“The Barouche, the Voitures, the Berline, the Cariole,” Jean-Baptiste calls out the models of the finest carriages we’ve ever seen. “The Braeck, the Cabriolet, Calèche, Limonières, Roulette, Diligence, the Victoria.” He squeezes my arm and claps his fingers together. “Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. There is the Emperor now.”

Napoleon waves from inside the royal gold-on-gold-on-gold carriage above a large plaque painted with the French motto.

“Liberty. Equality. Fraternity, Ha!” I say. “The irony of this moment slays me.”

“Don’t be a killjoy,” Jean-Baptiste says. “You can’t deny the Emperor cares about the people. Look at the wounded veteran he uses as his driver.”

A chill creeps up my spine. The Red Man, I remember from eight years ago, whirls his whip on brawny black horses with feathered headdresses from his perch atop the blinding gold carriage. His position has much improved, wearing the red suit of an Armée general with gold braid epaulets, medals strewn across his satin sash, an inverted triangle on his breast pocket. He looks neither right nor left; his top hat pulled low over his brow, his skin raw as a skinned elk. Yet, even from a distance, I smell the cloying decay of dead rats.

The grandiose carriage follows the curve of the driveway of the Palace of Tau, stallions trampling the road with their mighty hooves. I glimpse Empress Josephine through the window. If a woman of her substance loves Napoleon, there must be something laudable about him.

Jean-Baptiste’s hands flutter, his eyes over-bright. “The emperor seems penetrating. Was he penetrating when you met him? I like a man who’s penetrating.”

I poke him in the ribs. “You are on your own with that one.”

Jean-Baptiste judges my muslin morning dress with disdain. But his eyes light when he sees my burnt-orange Adelaide shoes. Whipping off his orange silk sash, he wraps it around my ribcage, tying a big bow under my décolleté. “Better. Definitely better.” He tucks an errant strand of hair into my hasty chignon. “You could have at least had a coiffure for the Emperor.”

I straighten the toque on his head. “Your coiffure is enough for both of us.”

Leaning over the stone wall, we watch the Red Man roll out a red carpet from the carriage to the palace. He helps Napoleon out first, proud chest, shoulders back, his steely eyes surveying the crowd like a battlefield, no doubt recording everything and everyone in his shrewd brain.

But it is Josephine who makes the crowd gasp. Taller than Napoleon, her filmy gown dangles low on her breasts. Ropes of pearls wind through her gold crown and continue through her dark curls and caress her swan-like neck. Her bare feet are clad with gilded sandals and dragonfly toe ring, as if she sprang from the gardens of her country chateau, Malmaison.

Men devour her with their eyes. Women curtsey low as she passes.

“France is overjoyed to have royalty again.” Papa’s brows angle together.

“Emperor Napoleon is better than a king.” Maman clasps green gloves in her hand. “He represents the people.” She picks up this garbage from the few newspapers Napoleon allows to publish, shutting down those who criticize.

“My dear Maman,” I say, itching to set her straight. “When Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of France, King of Italy, ruler of the Roman Empire, he’s no longer the people’s leader.”

“Quiet, Barbe-Nicole. Someone will hear you,” she says through her frozen smile.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Napoleon takes off his bicorn hat and waves it at the cheering minions, just as the clouds part and the sun shines on his broad brow, deep-set eyes, and well-formed lips, a carefully crafted image of the great Caesar himself. He stands there a full minute or so, allowing the crowd’s adulation to build, his small hand in his vest as if posing for a painting. Josephine smiles and waves beside him.

“Remember, Papa,” I say. “Wait to the very end to bring them to the Clicquot-Fourneaux table for judging. I promise a finale the Emperor will never forget.”

Papa taps his temple. “Always thinking, Barbe-Nicole. Everyone in the competition will be watching the last champagne to be judged. They’ll all remember Clicquot-Fourneaux.”

Maman points her long green fingernail. “Look, Nicolas. Let’s go say hello to Veuve Jacquesson.” She pulls him away.

“What have you planned, mon lapin?” Jean-Baptiste twitters his fingers.

“Let’s just say it’s guaranteed to bring the house down.”

As we walk down the long hall toward the ballroom, our heels click on the marble floor. I gaze up at the ancient tapestries and wood-planked vaulted ceilings, bringing back memories of the Le Bal des Débutantes, dancing with François and Fourneaux. Never in a thousand lifetimes would I have predicted I would be back here with Fourneaux.

Where is he, by the way? He is not helping Lizzette at our table near the stage where the chorus is singing The Marseillaise.

“Forward, children of the homeland!

The day of glory has arrived;

Against us, tyranny's bloody standard

Has been raised.

Do you hear the roar of ferocious soldiers

coming from the countryside?

They are coming into your very homes

To slaughter your sons and wives!”

Lizzette teeters on a chair over our table, building a towering pyramid of two-hundred and forty glasses.

“Fourneaux was supposed to stack the glasses,” I tell Jean-Baptiste. “Lizzette’s not tall enough.” I weave through the other vintner’s tables to ours, that damnable anthem growing louder. “To slaughter your sons and wives!”

“Get down from there,” I order. “You’re going to fall.”

Placing the final glass on the top, she looks down at Jean-Baptiste. “Ready, handsome?” She jumps into his arms, giggling.

“You almost toppled the tower,” I scold. “You know how important this is to me. Why would you risk ruining it?”

Her wayward eye winces. “I did it so it would get done. Fourneaux was too busy.” She tromps behind the stage curtain.

“Where are you going? I need you,” I call after her. “You have to serve the champagne.”

Other vintners gather around, gaping at the artful phenomenon we created.

Jean-Baptist stands back to admire the tower of glasses lit from underneath. “Brilliant, mon lapin! A champagne pyramid to honor Napoleon’s conquests in Egypt.”

“Just wait. That’s only the beginning,” I tell him, glancing at the curtain. How could Lizzette leave me here alone?

Maman brings a friend to admire the pyramid, smoothing out the wrinkles in my dress with her green gloves dyed to match her vibrant green dress. “You remember Veuve Jacquesson, don’t you, Barbe-Nicole? She hasn’t seen you since I brought you to visit.”

“I remember.” After our first visit, Veuve Jacquesson declined another with her sons. I ate too many sweets at tea.

Veuve Jacquesson kisses my cheeks. “I was so, so, sorry to hear about your husband. It’s so, so, hard to carry on after they die.”

Her words hurl rocks at my breastbone, though it’s been years since François died. People promise the pain will pass, but when? “You’ve fared well with your winery,” I manage to say.

“My sons take good care of me,” she says, nodding to her table where my would-be-suitors polish glasses and ice the Jacquesson champagne. “Sons are a blessing to a widow. Such a blessing.” Her hand holds her heart, and mine explodes like a cannonball.

“So, daughters are a curse for a widow?” I say.

“That was rude, Barbe-Nicole,” Maman says. “Veuve Jacquesson meant no harm.”

What’s wrong with me to go off like that? “Please forgive me. Nerves of the competition.”

“Let me say hello to your sons.” Jean-Baptiste takes the ladies’ arms and accompanies them to the Jacquesson table, saving us both from more awkward conversation.

I’ve got to find Fourneaux and the bottle we prepared for the judging. I find him behind the curtain with our cask master, Jacob, struggling to rotate our gigantic bottle in a horse trough of ice.

“Where have you been?”

“I’ve been icing this down since this morning.” His arms are red with cold and soaked to the elbows. “It’s not easy chilling this monster.”

“No! Oh, no, no, no, no.” I pull my hair out to the sides. “That’s way too long to ice champagne. The wine will be shocked. Take it off the ice.”

He pulls his beret over his ears. “You think no one knows anything but you. Leave this to me and let me know when the judges are coming.”

I clasp my palms together like a prayer. “I’m begging you to take the bottle out of the ice.”

The judging committee makes the rounds to the vintner’s tables, sampling wine and making notes. All of us watch Napoleon’s reactions, speculating which champagnes will please his palate. Wearing a full French Armée uniform, taller since he’s been crowned emperor, or maybe it’s the three-inch heels on his gleaming black boots. Walking two steps behind the royal couple is the Red Man with ulcerated skin. He never looks directly at a soul, yet he’s watchful as a snake.

After the judges visit all the other champagne houses, Papa leads them to Clicquot-Fourneaux, precisely as planned. Papa always comes through for me.

When the Emperor reaches our table, I smell roast chicken, followed by the fragrance of Josephine’s roses. The Red Man’s stench of dead rats is absent; he’s disappeared into the crowd.

My glass pyramid sparkles like a meteor shower reflecting the candle chandeliers and roaring fire in the enormous hearth.

“Impressive tribute to my husband, Madame Clicquot,” Josephine says. “Where is your handsome husband, the soldier?”

I steady my voice. “He passed from Typhus three years ago.”

“Our condolences,” she says. “And your son? He must be a big boy now.”

“We had a girl.”

“Oh, I see.” Her mouth crimps. “Keep her away from soldiers.”

Napoleon swings his bicorn hat to his chest. “François was his name.”

Not a question, but a fact. So rumors of Napoleon’s prodigious memory are true.

“I’ve lost half my armée to Typhus.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “There was something fragile about François, and, yet, he was brave enough to stand up to me. Reminded me of myself when I was younger.”

Fourneaux steps forward and bows. “Your excellency, wonderful to see you again.” He puts his arm around my shoulders. “When François passed, I took Barbe-Nicole under my wing.”

“Ah, the wine-maker.” Napoleon raises an eyebrow. “I hope she’s improved your champagne. As I recall, François was quite proud of her nose for wine.”

Lizzette opens the stage curtain with a small curtsy and merciful smile. She’s forgiven my outburst. Jacob and Fourneaux wheel out the most giant bottle of champagne anyone has ever witnessed.

Napoleon’s eyes flash wide. “Never seen such a thing.”

Josephine steps back, hand on her chest.

A reporter starts sketching the spectacle for Napoleon’s newspaper. The Parisian entourage and vintners gather closer, buzzing with astonishment and jealousy.

“Emperor and Empress, if I may…” I sweep my hand to the magnificent bottle I had our glassblowers make. “A Melchizedek is the largest champagne bottle ever blown, measuring four feet tall and weighing a hundred pounds.” My accomplishment chokes me up, but I swallow hard and carry on. “A Melchizedek holds the equivalent of forty bottles of champagne and will serve everyone here at the competition.”

I present Napoleon with a gleaming saber on a purple velvet pillow. “Emperor Bonaparte, will you do the honors of sabering the champagne?”

Without hesitation, he clutches the saber in both hands and holds it high, blade glinting.

Fourneaux and Jacob hoist the Melchizedek from the cart, their muscles quaking under the weight.

They barely steady themselves when Napoleon swoops the saber along the length of the bottle, hits the lip, and breaks it off. The cork flies through the delighted audience, spraying them with a glorious fountain of bubbles. My vision fulfilled, all my pent-up pressures release in the rainbow of champagne.

But after the champagne, explodes a six-foot snake of yeast, sediment, and ice, landing with a dreadful thud on our table. A woman faints and falls to the ground, and guards drag her off.

The snake smells sour and dead. The crowd backs away and holds their noses. I am numb, staring in disbelief at the horrid thing that, in the blink of an eye, destroys our reputation.

Napoleon glares at the serpent. Red-faced and nostrils flaring, he brings the saber down again. Slashing. Ripping. Chopping. Slicing. Slaughtering the slimy thing.

“We must kill the monster. No matter how many times it raises its head, we must slay it.” Rocking back and forth with each blow, his head jerks up, cringing, foaming at the mouth. His vicious massacre shakes the table, setting off a tremor through the glass pyramid. The entire audience watches with mouths gaping. My glass tower quakes, toppling the top coupes, until my entire creation collapses, crashing to the marble floor in a cacophony of shattering glass. No one dares move for fear of the broken glass on the floor.

Napoleon points his saber at my face. “You become strong by defying defeat and by turning loss into gain and failure to success.” He pricks my nose with an excruciating prickle that zings from my sinuses to my heart.

Then, he drops the saber into the fishy mush, takes Josephine’s arm, and walks through the shattered glass and champagne as if it isn’t there. The crowd follows them, paying no attention to the glass either. After the strange occurrences of today, I doubt there’s glass on the floor at all.

“I told you the bottle was too big for fermenting champagne,” Fourneaux crosses his burly arms on his chest. “But you insisted I do it anyway.”

“The champagne was perfectly clear until you froze the bottle,” I correct him. “It was a masterpiece.” I walk away before I can make an even bigger fool of myself.

We lost the competition, ruined our reputation, and humiliated ourselves in front of the entire Champagne region. Worst of all, winning this honor could have saved the winery from ruin. Fourneaux has no idea how bad finances are. There could not be a more spectacular failure.

***

29

La moutarde me/lui monte au nez.

The mustard is getting to my nose.

At the awards ceremony, I stand at the back of the chapel by the doorway, curious to see who won the Tuileries contract. Napoleon climbs the altar where French kings spoke for centuries before him. His tiny palms rise up as if bestowing his blessing.

“All of Europe thirsts for French champagne,” he declares. “By depriving our enemies of what they desperately desire, we’ll bring them to their knees. This competition rewards those who strive for excellence despite the daunting challenges we face as a country.”

Napoleon scans the crowd, his gaze locking on mine. “The winner of today’s competition is a woman who’s worked very hard to master her craft.”

God have mercy. It can’t be...

“Her champagne represents the best France has to offer and will be proudly served at the Tuileries.” He reaches out, and tears fill my eyes. “She is to be commended for her spectacular champagne. Please join me in congratulating this exceptional widow—” His weak chin juts out. “Veuve Jacquesson.”

Of course, it was not Clicquot-Fourneaux after that fiasco. What a fool I was.

Polite applause and the sour smell of disappointment pervades the ballroom—my own reeks to high heaven.

Napoleon places a wreath of roses around the widow’s neck, and despite my disillusionment, I think about how hard it must have been for her to continue the winery when the boys were small. I shouldn’t hold a grudge for an imagined snub a decade ago. If one woman can make it, others will follow. A surge of hope lifts my spirits, corny, perhaps, but hope is a start.

Next, Napoleon calls Papa to the altar. “I would like to reward the steadfast service of Ponce Jean Nicolas Philippe Ponsardin by making him the mayor of Reims, with the distinguished title of Baron Ponsardin.”

The audience gasps then cheers and jumps to their feet. Papa deserves it. But doesn’t anyone else find it strange that Napoleon has taken to naming Princes, Dukes, Barons, Counts, and Knights when we fought noble titles in the revolution? Apparently not.

Josephine Bonaparte taps my shoulder and hands me her calling card. “I would like you to ship me four cases of your finest champagne with an invoice.

“With or without snakes?” I smile and study her card. “So, you want it sent to Malmaison, not the Tuileries?”

“I’m moving to the country,” she says, staring at Napoleon.

“I heard how you love your rose gardens.”

Her eyebrows knot. “What? Oh. Unfortunately, I’m not leaving for my rose gardens. To be candid, my scouts tell me Napoleon has written the Tsar to marry his fourteen-year-old sister, Anna Pavlovna, and, at the same time, written the Emperor of Austria for the hand of his daughter, Archduchess Marie-Louise.”

“Surely you don’t believe such a travesty?” I ask.

“He needs an heir, and I am too old. Our grandson was his heir, but he died recently.”

I shake my head. “I’ve never seen such love as when the Emperor gazes at you.”

“Power is his mistress,” she hisses. “He needs a royal alliance in order to dominate Europe.” She pulls on her gloves. “By the way, you should tell your mother to throw away her green gloves. Our scientists tell us the arsenic pigment eats the skin away.”

My hand presses my chest. “I certainly will.” Explains the metallic undertones I smell under Maman’s gardenia perfume.

“I look forward to tasting your champagne.” The Empress kisses my cheeks and leaves.

If she can carry on after such a shock, maybe I can. Life presents daunting challenges, like the snakes in my champagne, and dares us to overcome them.

Grasping my tastevin around my neck for solace, I step out to the terrace to contemplate my next move.

***

The full moon illuminates the serene courtyard in sharp contrast to my confused emotions. I’m trapped in a partnership that makes both of us miserable. Bending over the balustrade, I rest my chin on my hands when Jean-Baptiste joins me.

“Your presentation went well,” he says, his dimples dancing.

I hoot. “Earth-shatteringly well, I’d say.”

Below, in the courtyard, Papa walks the Bonapartes to their ostentatious carriage. The Red Man opens the door, but Josephine refuses his hand when she enters the carriage. The two men talk outside. The Red Man’s hollow eye sockets focus straight ahead, but I swear I feel his ears straining. Napoleon draws maps in the air, and Papa asks questions. It irritates me to no end to watch Papa sidle up to a tyrant who would give up the love of his life for power.

The Emperor enters the carriage, and the Red Man locks him in. Climbing to the driver’s bench, he holds back the reins and flails his whip on the horses again and again. The powerful creatures whinny and buck, rearing up on hind legs. When the Red Man finally releases them, their ironclad hooves claw through the driveway kicking up dust devils and pitching stones. As the carriage passes, Napoleon raises remorseful eyes to the full moon, his expression no longer the haughty countenance of an Emperor but a man who must sacrifice everything for his kingdom.

“Why would the Emperor keep that hideous man as his driver?” Jean-Baptiste says.

“I’m beginning to think he doesn’t have a choice,” I say.

***

FIFTH COALITION WAR

1809. The British and Austrians once again formed a coalition to throw

Napoleon out of France and reinstate King Louis XVIII, who waits in exile.

Once again, Napoleon slaughtered their efforts in the Battle of Wagram.

“Although I loved Marie-Louis very sincerely, I loved Josephine better. That was natural; we had risen together, and she was a true wife, the wife I had chosen. She was full of grace, graceful even in the way she prepared herself for bed; graceful in undressing herself…I would have never parted with her if she had borne me a son.”

–Napoleon about Josephine

Napoleon must get the letter right this time since he can’t stand another minute cooped up with the Red Man and his foul smell. He tries hard to correct every mistake from before. Josephine was always so good at social graces, he hadn’t needed to be. But Josephine isn’t here any longer.

The Red Man watches over Napoleon’s shoulder, sure to judge his fifth draft as critically as he had the others.

To Marie-Louis of Austria

“Ma cousine,

The brilliant qualities that distinguish your person have inspired us with the desire to serve and honour you by approaching the Emperor, your father, with the request that he shall entrust to us the happiness of Your Imperial Highness. May we hope that your feelings which prompt us to take this step will be acceptable to you? May we flatter ourselves with the belief that you will not be guided solely by the duty of obeying your parents? Should the feelings of your Imperial Highness be partial to us, we would cultivate them so carefully and strive so constantly to please you in every way that we flatter ourselves with the hope of succeeding some day in winning your regard; such is the aim that we would fain encompass, and in respect of which we beg your highness to favour us.”

He hands the Red Man the letter. “Is that gallant enough? The right notes of respect and sincerity? Not too coarse? Loving, yet polite?”

The Red Man pushes it under his pen. “Sign it.”

The words swim on the page. “What if she denies me?” Josephine would know how to win favor with the young girl.

“You have nothing to worry about,” the Red Man assures him. “You’ll be married by proxy March 11, and you’ll meet the archduchess March 27 at your palace in Compiegne. April first, your civil wedding will take place in the Grand Gallery at Saint-Cloud, followed by the religious wedding and public celebration the next day at the Louvre and the Tuileries.”

“When am I legally able to share her bed?” Napoleon asks, hoping she’s not as dour as her father or the task will be arduous.

“You’ll be legally married as of the proxy ceremony.” His black tongue licks cracked lips. “But the wedding is not consecrated by the church until the Pope marries the two of you in April.”

“I shall bed her on our first meeting.” He forces a haughty laugh. “And she will like it so much she’ll beg me to do it again.” The irony is not lost on him. The passionate prowess Josephine shared with him so patiently would now produce an heir with a royal virgin.

The Red Man’s smell permeates Napoleon’s sinuses, the reek of maggots feasting on dead soldiers on the battlefield, a memory that wakes him at night in a cold sweat. When a soldier falls, flies lay thousands of eggs around the eyes, mouth, and genitals. When they hatch, the maggots suck liquid oozing from the corpse. Burrowing deeper, they feed on decaying flesh and turn the body into a mouthwatering goop. Growing ten times their size, within a week, they’ve eaten half the body.

Unable to stomach another minute, Napoleon paces to the far side of his office. “Call a meeting with my staff. This wedding must be talked about in every royal court of Europe, grander than Louis XVI’s wedding to Marie Antoinette. My Empress will wear a diamond crown. We’ll erect a silver altar at the Louvre for the wedding. I want fireworks, legs of mutton and sausages given out to the poor, a formal ball in the Champs-Elysees, amnesty for prisoners, horsemanship parades, concerts, and hot-air ballooning on the Champs de Mars.” His heart thumps madly.

The Red Man regards him with a satisfied smile.

Napoleon claps his hands. “Why aren’t you gone? I ordered you to call my staff. The wedding is in two months, and there’s much to do to make the grandest spectacle in Europe.”

The Red Man steps closer to embrace him. “I am well pleased with you, my son.” His noxious odor is overwhelming.

Napoleon thrusts out his arm and shouts. “Go, I tell you.”

When the Red Man is gone, the fervor leaves him, too. At his desk, there’s the bowl of rose petals Josephine picked in the Tuileries gardens. Scooping the petals in his palms, he buries his nose in them.

***

30

Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête.

She who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind.

Louis writes from Denmark: “You send me into Danish Lapland, but the people are so impoverished they live off fish and reindeer milk. Do you think they can afford French champagne?”

If Louis can’t sell champagne, we make no money, yet I still have to pay his substantial expenses. At what point do I cut our losses?

Louis has no luck in the Scandinavian countries either, with their hatred of Napoleon and France, so I ask him to return to Russia where his brawn and bluster are appreciated with open arms. I agree with the Russians. The longer he is gone, the more I miss the way he lights up a room with his antics and stories.

When Louis writes from Russia, his mood so exuberant, it warms me to read his letter.

“The sun shines at midnight six months out of the year, making the Russians a thirsty lot. They reek of sauerkraut mixed with onions, old leather, and wheat vodka, which they use as a cure-all tonic. When they wake with a headache, they drink. Dig up potatoes, they drink. Take a morning squat, they drink. Fondle their mistresses, they drink. My job is to substitute a bottle of Clicquot-Fourneaux for vodka.”

I laugh at his drawing: fur-hatted Russians squatting and kicking their legs with bottles of Clicquot champagne in each hand. In the following weeks, I revisit his letter when I need to laugh.

But I stop laughing when his shipment of champagne is returned to me.

HORS COMMERCE. Forbidden Goods, the port officials stamped on our shipping papers. They rejected the shipment at the border, and the waggoneer delivered it back to Clicquot-Fourneaux, demanding double pay for his trouble.

I write to tell Louis what happened and wait for his return letter. His usual gregarious tone is matter-of-fact and cold as he instructs me how to repack and reship it so it will reach him. He has promised champagne to customers, and I am causing him to lose their trust. I can’t bear to disappoint him after the trials he has endured to sell it.

“We must employ a deception if we are to continue business here. Label all your shipments Bohne Coffee & Chocolate, and send it through Manheim, Germany. Trust me on this. The French are in a perilous position in St. Petersburg.”

According to Louis’s instructions, we build larger crates and mark them “Bohne Coffee & Chocolate.” If this wine is to survive by wagon and low-slung droshkies over rutted roads, they need all the help I can give them. Repacking each crate with more straw around each bottle, I insert the six volumes of Don Quixote. The Impossible Dream. I hope Louis will appreciate my humor as I do his.

Fourneaux comes up from the crayères as we load the last of the crates on the wagon. “What’s this?” he pokes a meaty finger at the labels. “Bohne Coffee & Chocolate? You think the port authority won’t recognize the shipment they just rejected?” He scoffs. “There’s no way around it, Barbe-Nicole. If we can’t ship the wine, there is no reason to pay Bohne to entertain Russian nobles.”

“Louis suggested this method to ship. We owe it to him to try it. I’m sending it a different route through Germany to Belarus, then on to Moscow. It has to get there this time.”

Louis writes back that the shipment arrived:

“Why didn’t you warn me what to expect from this wine? What could you possibly think of it? You should have warned me that it would be greasy or may cast a deposit like sand in an hourglass. There is too much foam or not enough, too dry or too winey. I expect you to talk to Fourneaux about these problems. I have staked my reputation and, yea, my life for you here in Russia, and this wine has all the qualities aforementioned. Furthermore, all the dead yeast congealed into disgusting worms. It would have been better for the shipment to have overturned in the river than to try to sell this wine in Moscow.”

The challenge is clear. Kill the snake, or our champagne will not survive.

***

I wake up at night thinking about new techniques. From my experiments, I see that the bottles that received a liqueur de tirage of brandy, sugar, and yeast showed vibrant effervescence and clarity. And bottles kept in the cooler, darker cellars were best of all.

The house is too quiet. The ticking clock marks the hours I lay awake. Felix is not here to warm my empty bed and comfort me with his purr. He’s off on one of his prowls. When the sky lightens, I dress in woolens and go out to the crayères. I must inspect last year’s vintage and see what I can do to make them saleable. Familiar smells greet me as I descend the stairs: fermenting wine, chalk dust, aged barrels, the whale oil of my lantern.

The year-old bottles lay on their sides like soldiers fallen on the battlefield. A thick layer of yeast lays on the bottom, which dissolves as I shake it. Who wants to drink this murky stuff?

“Madame Clicquot, you’ll catch your death down here.” Jacob puffs hot breath. Our cellarmaster looks more like a schoolmaster with his long nose protruding through thick round lenses. It’s a wonder he sees anything through them.

“What are you doing down here so early?” I ask.

“I’m moving bottles so they won’t freeze. Remember, last time they froze—” Jacob stops mid-sentence.

The last time they froze, François danced and sang and tore his hair out, and Jacob helped Fourneaux clean up the mess.

“But, Jacob, moving the bottles now will stir up the dead yeast and form snakes in the wine,” I tell him.

Jacob keeps stacking bottles on the wagon. “Fourneaux told me to move the bottles.”

“And, I’m telling you to stop. Our wines arrive in Russia cloudy and ropey, without fizz.” A thud on the stairs makes me turn.

“What do you expect when the champagne travels cross-continent by wagon?” Fourneaux scowls.

“Let me explain,” I say, drawing a deep breath. “To get clear wine, we have to let the dead yeast cells settle, extract them, then add the tirage of brandy, sugar, and yeast to activate a second fermentation.”

“That extra labor will double the price of wine,” Fourneaux says. “Jacob, move the wine to the storeroom.”

My cheeks burn, though it’s freezing in here. “If you don’t believe me, you should trust the scholars.” I count on my fingers to make the point. “Chaptal, Godinot, Bidet and Rozier, all profess that drawing off yeast and adding a tirage will produce a clearer, more effervescent wine.”

His shoulders judder. “I’ve been making wine since before you were born. Soil is encrusted in my pores. The seasons are etched in my bones. Leave the winemaking to me.”

I cross my arms. “Louis can’t sell our wine in Russia with snakes of yeast.”

“That scoundrel shouldn’t be in Russia at all. His expenses are bleeding us, entertaining Russian noblemen. He went through ten cases this year, giving champagne away.”

“How can he sell wine if customers can’t taste it?” I say.

“The man has you completely bamboozled, my dear.” Jealousy taints his anger. “Don’t you understand he’s a shyster? He has you shipping our wine under his name instead of ours. Something fishy is going on, and he’s too far away to manage. I demand you fire Louis Bohne.”

I shake my head. “I need Bohne in Moscow. Another wagonload of champagne arrives this week.”

“Merde. You’re as pig-headed as they come.” Flinging his arm, he hits a bottle, and it explodes all over his breeches.

“Alexandre, look around. What do you see?” I point to each tunnel with thousands of bottles of aging wine. “We’re drowning in inventory.”

“Damnation, Barbe-Nicole.” He pounds a barrel, his sweat stinking of pent-up frustration and unrequited yearning. “I risked everything for you. Don’t you know that?”

“What does that have to do with yeast snakes in the wine?” I grab my tastevin to calm myself. “Alexandre, I am fighting for our winery. What are you fighting for?”

He grimaces as if I stabbed him. “Come on, Barbe-Nicole, why do you think I became your partner? I thought you would be grateful to learn winemaking from me and see the good life I could give you. Instead, you don’t listen to a word I say, yet chase after every notion your dashing salesman writes you.” He heaves a sorrowful sigh. “I am your partner, not Louis Bohne.”

For once, I hold my tongue and twist my tastevin on its chain. Clarity. Courage. The future depends on what I say now. “You are right, Alexandre. I’ve been selfish and focused on survival. It’s unfair to you.” A loud, insistent mewing comes from deep in the tunnel. “Felix!”

He runs and leaps into my arms, licking my cheek with his sandpaper tongue, bolstering my courage to continue.

“Alexandre, you have been a great friend and teacher.” I pet Felix’s white star, choosing my words with care. “But we want different things. I think it’s best we part ways as soon as our contract is over.”

His face blanches. “Arrête ton char!”  Stop your chariot. “I didn’t take you for a quitter.”

“Oh, I’m not quitting.” I carry Felix to the stairs. “I’m going to continue on my own.”

He stares stupefied. “You want to push me out? I’ve invested everything in this winery. You need me. You need my knowledge and reputation.”

“I’ll make do.” Climbing the stairs, I pet Felix. His loud purr soothes my anxious heart.

“This is a terrible mistake” His bellow reverberates against the chiseled chalk walls.

“Then it’s my mistake.” Pushing the door open, I step out into the brisk winter air, snowflakes falling on my burning cheeks. I’m either the stupidest person living or the bravest.

***

31

Se regarder en chiens de faïence

Looking at each other like earthenware dogs

I am not looking forward to telling Philippe what happened. He’ll want to close down the winery, and I’ll have to convince him otherwise. Since Mentine is home for a break, I take her with me to see her grand-père. She’s twelve, and Philippe hasn’t seen her in more than a year.

“Why do we have to come here?” Mentine’s hand squirms in mine as we follow Philippe’s manservant, climbing the narrow stairs to the second story of Clicquot Manor.

“He’s your grand-père Mentine. He’s family. And family is important.”

Plaster cracks and flakes on the walls of the staircase. The sun has eaten through the draperies, or maybe it’s moths fluttering about the folds. I’m glad François can’t see this. Bad enough, his daughter has to.

Mentine scrunches her aquiline nose, François’s nose. “I want to go back to Hotel Ponsardin. Mémé said we’d have a tea party.”

The manservant knocks on Philippe’s door, then opens it. A whiff of quinine, laudanum, vomit, and bedsores. Dust motes roll across the planked floor.

In the dim light from the draped window, Philippe struggles to sit up in bed. The servant helps him and positions two pillows behind his back.

“You didn’t say she brought my granddaughter,” Philippe scolds him. “Look at how tall you are.” He reaches out, and Mentine jumps back, startled at his liver-splotched fingers with thick, yellow fingernails.

Taking his hand in both of mine, I’m surprised by how soft they are, like his skin is melting.

“Mentine is home for the weekend.” I nod to the ornately painted jar on his night table. “Did someone bring you a present?”

“The finest.” He chuckles. “Open it.”

Thinking it’s lemon drops or licorice, I offer it to Mentine, and she reaches in and feels around. She screams and yanks out her hand, a gray slug hanging on her finger by a tooth.

“Get it off. Get it off,” she yells.

I pick it off and throw it back in the jar. Dozens of slimy worms wriggle around the bottom. I clap on the lid.

“Leeches,” he says. “My doctor plants the foul things all over my body to suck out the bad blood.” Mentine cringes, and he points at her. “Does she have your health?”

He means, is she given to François’s melancholy? “Mentine is very healthy.”

She clings to my skirts.

“You take after your Maman, then. Maybe you’ll have her business smarts, as well.”

Mentine scrunches her nose. “I don’t like champagne.”

He laughs, causing him to wheeze and gasp.

“Philippe, I’ve done something impulsive, I’m afraid.”

“I heard.” His mouth quirks. “Fourneaux came straight away, fuming that you quit. Who can blame you? With Bonaparte out there waving his sword at everyone who moves, the champagne business is not worth the trouble.”

“I am not quitting the winery. I’m dissolving the partnership.”

“Not quitting?” He clears his throat. “Then why break with Fourneaux? He’s got the experience.”

“I’m ready to make champagne my own.”

He coughs a horrible congested cough and collapses on his pillow, eyes closed. Mentine steps back.

“I came to get your blessing, Philippe.”

Eyes still shut, his ribcage still.

“Philippe?” Laying my hand on his chest, I feel the weak pulse of his heart.

He wheezes and opens his eyes. “I should have helped you more after François died. I just didn’t have it in me.”

I smooth back his hair, brittle and broken. “Without you, I wouldn’t have had the courage. You had faith in me, backed me financially, convinced Fourneaux to be my partner.”

He scoffs, spraying spittle on his cheeks. “Fourneaux begged me to be your partner. I should have known he only wanted a wife.”

The mantle clock chimes the half hour, and Mentine pulls my skirt. “Mémé said to be home by three o’clock.”

Philippe tries to sit up but falls back. “I’m sorry, Barbe-Nicole, but starting the winery over for a fourth time is plain stupid. Throwing good money after bad.”

As if crushed by a grape pressior, my chest collapses. Not only does my father-in-law disapprove of me continuing the winery, he’ll want his investment back. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Philippe. I hoped I could count on your support.”

He splays his hands on his bedcovers, helplessly, no more to give. I’m on my own.

Bending over, I hug him and feel his shoulder bones through his nightshirt. “I’ll pay back your investment as soon as we sell more wine.” The Fifth Coalition War makes that improbable.

“Ne pouvez pas presser le blook d’un navet.” Can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. He smiles.

***

Mentine and I can barely find our way through the overgrown labyrinth to Hotel Ponsardin. Never one for nature, she whimpers dramatically.

“You did a good deed visiting your grand-père,” I say. “He loved seeing your beautiful face.”

She squinches her pert nose.

“It smelled funny in there, didn’t it? It was his illness and medicines,” I explain.

“I didn’t smell a thing. Mémé says I’m not cursed like you.” A wayward vine slaps her in the face. “Ow!”

“Oh, darling, are you hurt?” A red welt rises on her cheek, and I press it with my hand. “We’ll get some ice on that.” I hold back the vine, and she ducks through and scampers ahead.

“What did Mémé say, exactly?” I run after her.

“She said you bury yourself in the crayères since my father died because of your cursed nose.”

Her twisted story breaks my heart. “You misunderstood, Mentine. Your father’s death had nothing to do with my nose.” I rush to keep up. “Of course, I’m sad your father died, aren’t you?”

“I was very sad when you sent me away. I thought it was my fault Papa died, and you were mad at me. But Mémé visited and explained it to me. She started coming every weekend, so I wasn’t so lonely. She took me to the Louvre and the Palais-Royale, the gardens of Luxembourg, and the Tuileries. She took me to Théâtre Français for theater and Montansier for Opera. Pretty soon, I didn’t miss you so much.” She glances sideways at me. “Why are you starting a champagne house on your own when Mémé says you don’t have to work.”

She’s never been interested before. “Would you like to go down in the crayères after Mémé’s tea? I could show you the operation.”

Mentine shakes her head. “My cousins are coming later. Mémé invited me to stay with her, so I don’t miss the fun.”

What did I have planned for her at home, after all? Inventory of bottles? Meeting with the cooperage? “What about Felix? He’s been missing you.”

“He can come to Mémé’s, too.”

I start to object, then stop. Am I so selfish to want Mentine to spend the weekend with me rattling around the crayères?

We reach the center of the maze, a stile of dead-ends and wrong turns. We can wind up lost for hours or back at the beginning where we started. I never minded getting lost with François, but Mentine is turning around in a circle, her eyes wide and frantic.

“Which path, Maman?” she whines. “Mémé will think I’m not coming.”

Nothing looks familiar. Standing on tiptoe, I peer above the overgrown vines looking for the slate roof of Hotel Ponsardin, but they’ve grown too high to see anything.

“You don’t know which way to go, do you?” Mentine moans.

Closing my eyes, I inhale moss, fish, and, water, scents of the Marne River. To the right, I smell cheese, runny brie, and pungent blue, the cheesemonger in the marketplace. Another quarter turn, and I smell the dewy, musty smell of sheep’s wool at Ponsardin Woolens.

I take Mentine’s hand. “This way.” Sometimes you just have to choose a path and have faith it will lead where you want to go.

***

Sunlight streams through the beveled windows of Maman’s sunporch. Four place settings, though I thought there would be just three of us. The hand-painted Majolica plates are set out, the ones she never uses, now gleaming and beautiful for Mentine’s tea party. My hand lights on those sculpted plates, a scrolled Acanthus leaf base painted on pale yellow porcelain.

Maman holds out her arms when she sees us, her green tulle dress backlit by the sun, green kid gloves she refuses to give up, no matter what I say about the toxic dye. Tiny crocus are strewn in her long flowing hair as if they sprouted there.

Mentine runs and buries her face in her skirt. “So beautiful, Mémé.”

“Let’s get you dressed for tea,” Maman says as if there is something wrong with how I dressed her.

As they brush past, Maman assesses my empire-waist dress, with the thinnest chemise and pantalettes, my cornflower-blue shoes tied with delicate lace, miraculously unsoiled by the labyrinth.

“You look nice, Barbe-Nicole,” she says, surprised.

“We went to see Philippe.”

“Is he feeling any better?”

I shake my head.

“He’s suffered more than his share.” She sighs. “Nicolas is joining us, but he seems to be detained by your partner.” When she lifts her chin to the window,  I notice tape holding back her sagging jawline. How sad she’s so uncomfortable in her own skin.

Outside, Fourneaux loads our wine pressior onto his wagon. Papa is red-faced and wagging his finger.

“He can’t take that.” I run out to the courtyard.

Fourneaux throws a rope over the wagon, tying down a full load of carts, basket presses, casks, wine bottles.

“I thought you were a gentleman,” Papa says.

“Why should I suffer?” Fourneaux points at me. “She’s the one who broke it off.”

“I’m sure you misunderstood,” Papa says. “She’s particular, that’s all.”

“There’s no misunderstanding.” Lifting my skirt, I stride across the courtyard. “But the equipment should be split in half, at least.”

He climbs to the wagon bench. “The equipment goes with me, you salope.”

His slur feels like a slap to my face.

Thrashing the reins against the horses, he drives the wagon off in a cloud of dust.

“Good riddance.” Papa puts his arm around me and takes me into the house. “That business was doomed from the time you and François began.” He holds the door open. “The best thing to do is put this behind us.”

Numbly, I calculate how much it will take to replace the equipment.

“Let’s have a nice tea, shall we?” Papa guides me down the hallway, but I stop him.

“I need to borrow at least eighty-thousand francs to replace what he took.”

“You can’t be serious. Shut it down, mon chou.” He scoffs. “Besides, no one has that kind of money. Especially not me, now that Napoleon’s ordered another five-hundred thousand uniforms before he has paid for the last. And if I don’t produce them, I’ll be jailed for treason.” He lowers his voice, the odorous fear seeping into his familiar scent. “Napoleon’s gearing up for something huge. Something terrifying.”

“What is it, Papa?”

Maman calls from the sunroom. “Are you two coming? The tea is getting cold.”

Papa takes my arm, and we join the party, though I have no reason to celebrate. He hugs Mentine and kisses Maman’s cheek as she orders a new servant girl to pour the tea.

“I told Mentine I never allow pastries unless you’re here, Barbe-Nicole.” Maman passes me the three-tiered tray of all my favorites. “You should have asked Monsieur Fourneaux to tea.” A pasted star on the corner of her mouth falls to the table, exposing a raw sore.

“We split up.” I take a bite of a Madeleine.

“What a shame. He was so enamored with you,” Maman says, sipping her tea with pinkie up.

I press my hand against my hot cheek. “I’m going forward with the winery on my own and renaming it Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin.”

“Oh, my, full of surprises,” Maman says. “But why name it Veuve? What if you remarry? Why label yourself as a widow?”

“I want no confusion about whose champagne it is,” I say. “We’ve had three names in a decade: Clicquot-Muiron, Clicquot et Fils, Clicquot-Fourneaux.”

“And, Philippe is willing?” Maman’s eyebrow arches.

“He does not approve and wants nothing to do with a new winery.” I pass the pastry tray to Mentine, and she takes a petit four. “And now Fourneaux has taken my equipment. I need to borrow money.” Trying to sweeten the bitter taste on my tongue, I choose a millefeuille before I remember they’ve renamed it “Napoleon.” I bite his head off with pleasure.

Papa pats Maman’s hand. “Don’t worry, dear, I told her I can’t invest right now. Not with the strain we’re under.”

But, Maman is a million miles away, staring at the tiny bubbles in her champagne glass. Not surprising, since she’s never taken an interest in my business. Her apathy underscores how alone I am, with Fourneaux gone and Louis on the far side of Europe. Another big bite of Napoleon.

***

32

Un clou chasse l’autre.

One nail drives out another.

Lizzette bends over her trunk, carefully folding her clothing into the corners. This time, she requested a month off to help her cousin set up a new household in England. She says her cousin’s family will feel safe for the first time in more than a decade, having moved from France to Verona to the Duchy of Brunswick to Courland to Prussia and Russia trying to escape Napoleon’s wars.

“Perhaps you could wait until Louis gets here?” I ask.

“Have you heard from him?”

“No,” I answer simply, thinking he probably went home to Germany.

“I’ll be back before harvest.” Lizzette presses down her clothing to add more. She’s packing her entire wardrobe.

I can hardly refuse her request to help her family, though I need her and will miss her terribly. What if she doesn’t come back this time? Lizzette is family to me, as I hope I am to her, closer than my own Maman.

“Let me go to the post office for you this morning,” I offer. “The air will do me good.”

“That would be a big help,” she says. “The coach leaves at seven tomorrow, and I have to train the new girl.”

She hands me a handkerchief filled with dried lavender for my nose, and I’m on my way. The rank air of Reims is nothing like the Champagne countryside in Bouzy: the bitter smell of chamber pots emptied in alleys, chimneys belching thick yellow smoke, stables mucking out to the street, the eye-watering sting of tannery chemicals. The lavender sachet may not expunge these scents but filters them at least.

The Postmaster parcels out my mail one by one, studying each sender with interest. I grab the entire stack from his hands. “Thank you, Monsieur Lamont. I’ll sort it myself.”

Walking home, my pointed boot toe wedges in a cobblestone, and I catch myself on a corner of a building.

Down the narrow alleyway, I see Papa handing Lizzette a thick envelope. Their heads are nearly touching, talking in low voices I cannot hear, looking about furtively. My heart drubbing, I duck behind the corner. What am I seeing? An affair between them seems unthinkable. I march toward them. Lizzette slips the envelope into her coat and walks away.

“What’s this about, Papa?”

“Barbe-Nicole, what a surprise to see you here.” He looks past me but kisses both cheeks. “Let me walk you home.” Taking my arm, he walks briskly out of the alleyway and turns the opposite way as home. We pass the blacksmith pounding out horseshoes, smelling of scorched iron. Farmers wheel carts of vegetables into the market. A newsboy yells on the corner, “Emperor Bonaparte occupies Madrid and takes command of the Spanish armée of seventy thousand.”

Papa buys a paper and gives the boy a franc.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I say.

“Keep walking and talking. Tell me a joke, any joke.”

“I don’t tell jokes.”

“Very well, then, I’ll tell one.” Biting his lip, he squints intensely. “When a lady sews, she is not what she seams.”

I make a face. “You shouldn’t tell jokes either.” His deeper meaning dawns on me. “You mean Lizzette?”

He keeps walking, his mouth clamped shut.

We finally reach my house, a spicy aroma wafts from my geraniums. Swinging open the iron gate, Felix jumps into my arms, glaring at me with demanding gold-green eyes. He wants cream and chicken, now.

Papa peers down the street. “I better get home. Your mother will wonder what took me so long.”

“No, you don’t. You’re coming in.” I hold the door for Papa. “I just have to feed Felix. You know matagots.”

“Matagots,” he scoffs. “Bad luck, aren’t they?”

“Not if you treat them right.” Felix wriggles and mews as we walk to the kitchen.

Papa peeks out of the blue toile curtains.

“Stop all the cloak and daggers and tell me what is going on,” I tell him.

Lizzette enters the kitchen, and their eyes meet, sealing a pact between them.

“What are you hiding?” I ask.

Lizzette peeks from beneath her mob bonnet. “Sorry, Madame, but I swore an oath of allegiance. I cannot tell upon pain of death.”

Sweat beads under Papa’s jowls. “You must swear to keep this secret, Barbe-Nicole.” The same as he said when I found priests hidden in our crayères during the Reign of Terror while he was a Jacobin leader.

“It stays between us, Papa.” I hold up my palm. “I give you my word.”

He swallows hard. “King Louis XVIII is establishing his court in England preparing for the day Napoleon is conquered.”

Lizzette’s last-minute trips, her secrets, and half-truths fall into place. “Your cousin is the king?” I ask.

She flushes. “Our mothers were sisters. In Versailles, I was lady-in-waiting to his mistress, the Countess of Balbi.”

My vision blurs into a chessboard pattern. “Do you have anything sweet, Lizzette? I need something sweet.”

She rustles around in the pantry and brings out pear tarts with great globs of sweet cream.

Wolfing down half my tart, the sugar eases my dizziness. “But you have supported Napoleon since the beginning. You were both Jacobins in the revolution. I thought you were friends.”

Papa pouches his lips and nods. “Napoleon loves to debate his plans with me and appreciates my views.” He wolfs a bite of pear. “But he is has changed. The more power he has, the worse his hunger. The man has crowned himself Emperor of three countries. He will not stop until he rules all of Europe.” He takes another bite.

“So now you’re a royalist?” I ask, my head spinning.

He eats the last bite of tart and takes time to savor it. “I am French. Whatever is good for France, I am bound by honor to do.”

“And you?” I ask Lizzette.

She smiles slyly. “I am, but a poor seamstress that no one would ever suspect was a messenger for the king.”

Felix eats the rest of my tart and licks my plate clean.

“Why would France want another king?” I ask.

“The lesser of two evils,” Papa says. “The French must choose between a madman who kills thousands of Frenchmen in the name of freedom or the one true king given to France by God.” He rolls his eyes to the heavens.

Clamping my hands on my pounding heart, I try to grasp what he’s saying. “After a decade of fighting for liberty, equality, and fraternity, you expect the French to lay down arms to the king?”

“Louis XVIII has promised to throw out the Ancien Regime and serve the people of France the way they want to be governed. The king will abolish conscription to war, reduce taxes, protect freedom of religion and freedom of the press. He’ll keep the current judicial system and elect a new Chamber of Deputies to set laws.”

“But will Louis XVIII actually do all these things?” I ask.

“Any more of those tarts?” he asks Lizzette, and she brings him another. “We’ll not allow Louis XVIII to set one gouty foot near the French throne until he makes these proposals law. I haven’t risked my life on a wing and a prayer.” He eats the tart in a quick bite.

“But can Napoleon be defeated?”

“Not likely.” He huffs. “Napoleon has lost only three battles out of forty.” Papa unbuttons his vest, his stomach bulging. “And, he’s conscribed hundreds of thousands of more soldiers to the Grande Armée.”

“How is that possible? All our Frenchmen are in the Armée already.”

Lizzette starts to peel onions for dinner. Felix supervises, his tail swishing back and forth like a metronome. I find another knife and help.

“Napoleon is amassing the largest armée in history.” Papa’s eyes water from the fumes. “Poles, Austrians, Italians, Bavarians, Saxons, Prussians, Westphalians, Swiss, Danes, Norwegians, Portuguese, Croats, and Irish.”

“Why is he building such an absurd Armée?” I cut an onion in half.

Papa wipes a tear from his cheek. “The Tsar betrayed his treaty with Napoleon and is trading with England. Napoleon is out of his mind with rage.”

Lizzette pounds a mallet on a head of garlic and peels it.

My nose prickles. “War with Russia is disastrous for my champagne. We sell most of our wine there.”

“Not anymore.” He shakes his head. “Not until Napoleon takes revenge on the Tsar.”

The odor overwhelms me, and I massage my throbbing temples. “Maybe Louis can sell our wine here in France.”

“This new war has drained our treasury,” Papa says. “Banks are closing, Napoleon’s Continental Blockade has strangled our imports, and no one’s buying French goods.”

“It’s like a zugzwang in chess. No way to win,” I say. “If we support Napoleon’s wars, we send Frenchmen to their death. But bringing back the king when we’ve worked so hard to be free? Neither move makes sense to me.”

Lizzette pulls her bottom eyelid down in disdain. “It’s blood-sausage soup, it is.”

“Freedom means you decide for yourself what to believe, no matter what the rest of the world believes,” Papa says. “So, where do you stand, mon chou?”

I flash on François’s agony killing his countrymen, the horror and guilt festering inside until it killed him as well. “Certainly not with the Little Devil.” Reaching out, I clasp their hands in mine. “Your secret is safe with me.” New vigor pulses through my veins.

If Napoleon can conquer Russia, so can I.

***

It is one thing to want to conquer the world and quite another to pay for it. My enthusiasm wanes as I shuffle bills through my fingers. Suppliers have refused me more credit until they are paid. A second time through the pile doesn’t change the fact that I’m broke.

I’d pull my hair out if Mentine and Felix weren’t playing with a ball of string at my feet. Instead, I open a bottle of Clicquot champagne and pour myself a coupe.

“May I join you?” I hear Maman’s irksome voice at my office door. She has never graced my office, and now is certainly not a good time.

“What a surprise,” I say and hand her a glass of champagne. Maybe it will help.

Mentine jumps to hug Maman and tipples her glass. “Can I come home with you, Mémé?”

Maman caresses Mentine’s cheek. “After I give your mother something.” She slides a polished wood box across my desk. “I thought this might help.”

In the box are Grand-mère’s emerald necklace and earrings. I gasp, and Mentine giggles, holding her hands over her mouth.

I haven’t seen the jewels since my wedding day when I gave them to Maman. The facets catch the sunlight and splash green prisms across my plastered walls.

Mentine’s hand hovers over the jewels. “Can I touch them?”

“Your Grand-mère left them to you, Barbe-Nicole,” Maman says. “Sell them for your winery. She would have been pleased you used them this way.”

To whom much is given...Grand-mère had said. My head swims, trying to make sense of it. Maman has never come to my aide before.

“Can I try them on before you sell them?” Mentine asks. I clasp them on her neck, and she gazes in the gilded mirror, fingering the enormous emeralds.

Maman takes another sip of champagne. “Your champagne has gotten better, oui?”

“Oui!” I take her hand. “Oh, Maman, without these jewels, I would have to close the doors.”

She squeezes my hand with her own, spidered with green veins.

My chest bursts with conflicting emotions: shock, relief, missing Grand-mère, and gratitude for the astounding gift Maman is giving me in my darkest time of need. I raise my glass.

“Grand-mère once said, ‘To whom much has been given, much is expected.’”

Mentine turns from the mirror. “What did she mean by that?”

Maman raises an eyebrow and drinks her champagne.

“When I find out, you will be the first to know,” I tell them.

***

I send Grand-mère’s jewels to Louis to sell to his Russian noblemen. When his return package arrives, I open it at my desk. Felix attacks my feet as they move about, having a good old tussle with my dragonfly slippers.

“I’ve only been able to sell the earrings, because the outlook is so bad here.” Louis writes. Disappointed, I count the money. Not enough to replace everything Fourneaux took, but it will have to do until there’s another break in the wars.

“Everywhere…business is totally dead. Europe is on the verge of economic collapse, and everyone knows the Little Devil is to blame. Anything French is banned. In Smolensk, they threatened to arrest me if I didn’t leave. The ports will be closed for years. No amount of cunning can get our wines to international clients, even if they did not hate the French for causing this trouble.”

Louis’s drawing shows a blindfolded Little Devil in his red jacket and Bicorne hat, shooting his cannon willy-nilly at European kings surrounding him. Louis scrawled a hasty note on the bottom. “Worst possible time to start a business.”

Felix jumps on the drawing and paws it to shreds.

“Stop that.” I shoo him off. “That’s mine.” I try to piece it back together, as if it has value…a lover’s poem or a bank draft. But the pieces are too torn to fit.

I write Louis to return to Reims for a new strategy, hoping I’ll have one by the time he arrives. At least, he’ll be here.

***

33

Plus facile adire qu’a faire.

Easier said than done.

“Crisis of 1811,” the newspapers call it when Europe’s economy spirals into failure due to Napoleon’s Continental Blockade. Still no word from Louis, and I fear imprisonment or worse.

As I drive over the hill to Bouzy, vineyards stretch in every direction. The spring is too hot. The budding leaves are so tender a late frost will kill them, and the harvest could be lost. I used to poke fun at François for his overwrought worry, but now that same worry eats at my stomach lining. Silently, I ask his forgiveness. You have to walk in another’s shoes before judging them.

My nerves skitter like mice across the field when I descend into the crayère to blend my first wines without Fourneaux. Everything I ever learned has flown from my head, leaving it as cold and empty as the chalk chamber. Thank goodness my cellarmaster, Jacob, stayed on out of loyalty to Philippe. Many of the old cellar men left with Fourneaux, not willing to work for a woman. Jacob has his hands full, adapting to my new techniques in blending, bottling, and storing bottles pointed with the neck down to capture the dead yeast.

As I face the task of blending, I think of the question François, and I asked everyone when we started.

What makes a wine great?

Veuve Demers told us it was the terroir: the soil, topography, and weather in which the grapes are cultivated. Fourneaux said it was the timing of harvest. Renée, the widow who took over her husband’s presser job when he died at war, said pressing the grapes with a light hand was key to capturing the taste. Jacob said it was the temperature of the caves.

Great wine is a mystical alchemy of those factors, but the final responsibility lies with the winemaker to blend various years, grape varietals, and terroir to create the ultimate wine.

The chill of the cave riddles my arms and legs with goosebumps as I siphon wine from three different barrels. Chardonnay tasting from lemon zest to rich and buttery. Pinot Noir for intense black cherry, sassafras, and mint. Pinot Meunier for aromatics, brightness, and acidity.

My head spins with the choices. Each vineyard has a unique terroir—sunny slopes to river valleys to rolling hills. Soils vary from rocks to clay to sand. The weather, the sun, the exposure. All these factors contribute to great wine. By the end of the day, I’ve blended every combination, all of them mediocre to awful. What made me think I could do this alone?

My kerchief is strangling me. I pull it off and wipe my sweating brow. Resting my pounding head in my hands, I close my eyes. An innocent single note of honeysuckle awakens my nose.

Le Nez.

I was trying to use my brain instead of my curse and lost my way.

Tying the kerchief around my eyes, I inhale the honeysuckle-smelling wine from my gold tastevin. Simple and flowery but begs for a deeper note. Smelling my way through the wines, I select just the right ones to blend. The resulting wine is creamy and rich, fruity, with just the right amount of oak. Delicious and astoundingly simple. It was there all along. I must trust Le Nez.

Is Le Nez a gift or a curse? Does it matter? I was born to make champagne. The best champagne the world has tasted.

***

The blazing oven spits fire around the glassblower. I remember his face, though he won’t remember me from twenty years ago. He’s still a Goliath of a man. His bare pectorals glisten from the heat of the fire, marled with soot and sweat. George Bergeron blows through a three-foot copper tube into the molten glass, the first step in forming a glass bottle.

His face triggers a deep-seated fear in me from the Reign of Terror when Bergeron led an angry mob of starving workers to Hotel Ponsardin, pounding on our front gate with raised torches. I remember watching from our third-floor nursery, peeking out from under the window sash. Maman puffed in and out like a fireplace bellow, clutching baby Clementine to her chest. She kissed her baby’s forehead and handed her off to me, running downstairs to help Papa in the courtyard, trying to appease the raging crowd.

“That giant will eat us.” Jean-Baptiste, just seven at the time, pointed down at Bergeron. I pressed my hand over his eyes to shield his view.

The overwhelming aroma of baking bread wafted into the nursery. A horrific jolt shook the windows and then repeated. I peeked out to the courtyard. The front gates bulged with each blow of a massive log until it finally burst, and Bergeron led the crowd to our front door.

Papa, Maman, and Lizzette were ready with baskets, passing out dozens of baguettes from our kitchen cart to outstretched hands. Our scullery maids carried out more and more bread from the kitchen, like the parable of Jesus and the loaves. The baguettes may have saved our lives.

Now, in his workshop, Bergeron pulls on a molten glob of glass until it is a foot long. He blows the tube until his breath expands the hot glass. With a twist, he forms the punt, an indentation in the bottom of the bottle. Then he sets the finished bottle on a rack to cool. With a shock, I notice he’s in an iron wheelchair. This giant who haunts me has one leg.

“Have you lost your way, Madame?” he says. “The market is down to the left.”

“Citizen Bergeron,” I greet him as Papa taught me to greet a tradesman, using Citizen rather than Monsieur. “I am Barbe-Nicole Clicquot.” I extend my hand, and he ignores it.

“I deal with Citizen Fourneaux.” He looks out on the road. “Where’s your waggoneer to pick up the bottles?”

“I drove the wagon down, as Fourneaux and I have parted ways, and our waggoneer went with him.”

“My contract was with Fourneaux.”

I hand him a heavy burlap bag. “I brought gold for the bottles.”

He checks the contents.

“But I want to inspect the quality,” I say. “The last wagonload had forty percent breakage. I trust you blew the bottles thicker this time as I indicated on the order.”

“You’re as finicky as Fourneaux said.” He sneers. “You’ll go bust without him.”

“I’d like to inspect my bottles.”

He scoffs. “They’re already packed in crates and ready to load.”

“Then I’ll spot check to see that they’re to my specifications.”

“You Ponsardins think you can smile and twist arms, and nobody will notice how you always come out on top while we workers get pinched all the way. Nicolas Ponsardin has changed allegiances more times than an actor changes costumes. I’ve had enough of your aristocratic ways.”

A woman shuffles in from outside, hunched over. “The shipment is all packed.” She curtsies when she sees me. “Ah, Madame Barbe-Nicole, nice to see you again.”

A whiff of almond paste and vanilla fetches a vivid memory. “Citizen Camille, isn’t it? You were our scullery maid when I was growing up. You snuck me macarons in the kitchen.”

Her laugh clucks like the chickens in the yard. “You had such a sweet tooth as a girl.”

Bergeron raises the sack. “She brought gold.”

“Thanks be to God.” Miss Camille crosses herself. “We let our workers go since business is poorly. Hard for George to manage since they shipped him home from the Battle of Bailén.”

He rubs his stump.

“I’m sorry, Citizen Bergeron,” I say. “I didn’t know you were conscripted.”

“I volunteered, falling for that hogwash about liberty and equality for the common folk.” He pushes the wheel of his chair closer to his wife. “Look where it got me.”

“We’re not so bad, George, as long as we keep the Clicquot account.” Camille takes the gold sack from his lap. “He almost burst his lungs on your bottles, Madame. Extra thick, like you asked. Wrapped each one myself with extra paper and straw.” They look at each other with the pride and camaraderie François and I once shared.

“I’ll take your word for it then, Citizen Camille.”

“What makes you think people will keep drinking champagne during the Coalition Wars?” Bergeron wipes sweat from his forehead.

“Heard straight from Napoleon’s mouth myself,” I say. “Champagne! In victory, we deserve it, and in defeat, we need it.”

George snorts. “He said that?”

I hold up crossed fingers. “As long as my champagne is good and your bottles don’t break, we’ll be doing business a good long while.” I wish I was as certain of the future as I sound.

***

34

Arriver comme un cheveu sur la soupe

To arrive like a hair in the soup

The new equipment I bought won’t matter if we don’t get these grapes picked and pressed. After three days of freezing rain, my vendangeurs trudge into the barn long faced, exhausted, and filthy with mud, wheeling in cartloads of grapes. They dump them on tables for sorting women to pick through before going into the basket pressior. Compared to picking out in the downpour, the leaky barn is a haven.

Dipping a ladle into the spicy-smelling brew, I serve hot wine to each worker. “Lizzette, we’re going to need more wine.”

She rolls over another keg of Bouzy Rouge. To that, we add sliced lemons from our trees, cinnamon sticks, cloves, and beet sugar we grow because we can’t import cane sugar through the Continental Blockade.

A boy, younger than Mentine, shivers so much his hand shakes bringing a cup to his mouth. In another year, he’ll be conscripted to war, never to be seen again.

An earsplitting clap of thunder follows a flash of lightning, followed by another and another, lighting up the hills, then plunging us in soggy darkness.

Veuve Lavigne holds her grape-stained hand to her mouth and yells over the thunder. “As soon as this wave moves through, we’ll go back out to the vineyards. Three hectares left to pick.”

“Too dangerous with the lightning,” I tell her. “Send the vendangeurs home.”

“The grapes will rot if we don’t pick them today. Monsieur Fourneaux would want--” She sighs heavily and drops her head. The vendangeurs were used to taking orders from a man, and I sense my softer style unnerves them.

I hand her a cup of wine. “Let everybody warm up and get a bite to eat. Then, send them home.”

“You heard the boss,” Veuve Lavigne tells the crew. “Pray for a dry day tomorrow and report back here at dawn.”

But the workers don’t leave. They pitch in at the sorting table, eliminating so many ruined grapes, I feel numb. The juice will be meager and tainted with mold. After the hottest, driest summer in memory, storm after storm rolled in from the north this August, forcing our vineyard women to pick through miserable weather or lose the harvest altogether. Dirty, wet work in the pouring rain. They’ve been troopers, and I’m lucky they didn’t defect to Moet or Jacquesson, where they can afford to pay more due to their contracts with Napoleon. Wet, ragged clothing sticks to their bodies, their hands deftly sorting, smiling, and cracking jokes. My heart swells with gratitude, watching these women work. Most are war widows; the rest hold out hope for a husband when the men return. I serve plenty of second and third helpings of hot wine.

“Not too bad, right, Veuve?” Velma holds up a bunch of grapes that look good until I see the spots.

“Gray mold,” I say. “Terrible for wine, toss anything that looks like this in the reject pile. Keep only round, perfect grapes. Nothing that’s split because it’s taken on too much water.”

The women’s hands hover over the grapes, sorting perfect ones from the bad. I join them in the sorting. Yvonne works together with her daughter, showing her what to do. As soon they finish sorting, they dump another wheelbarrow, and we start again. My upper back screams in protest.

“It helps to pull your shoulders back,” Yvonne says, demonstrating the move. I see she is pregnant again.

“You should be resting,” I say.

She shakes her braids and smiles. “I haven’t missed a harvest since I was eleven. It’s the best time of the year. And we need the money.”

Eleven years old. I can’t imagine Mentine sorting grapes. She’s off visiting my sister Clementine and the cousins while we harvest. Doesn’t say much for my mothering skills, I suppose, letting her skip the tough parts.

The pressior women empty the best grapes into the top of the wood-slatted basket press and let them settle. Free-run juice flows out the bottom from the weight of the grapes. Then, turning the crank, they press the round top onto the grapes, forcing juice into a trough that flows into the barrel.

Dipping my tastevin into the barrel, I inhale the aroma of butter, sugar, vanilla. The hidden appeal of fine Chardonnay. Takes me back to the kitchen at Hotel Ponsardin, a forbidden area for us children. Miss Camille let me mix the ingredients, press the mixture through the mill onto the cookie sheet, and slide it into the wood-fired oven.

The women rotate the crank and start to press again.

“Stop.” I hold up my hand. “Stop the pressior.”

They stop cranking. “Is something wrong, Veuve?”

I laugh. “Something is right. This wine tastes perfect just as it is. Keep this wine separate from the rest, and be sure to mark it as the first pressing.”

“But we can double volume with another pressing or two,” Renée, the pressior woman says.

“Another pressing will add the bitterness of the stems and skins,” I say, though challenging her in front of her crew is not the best tactic.

Renée cocks her head. “Monsieur Fourneaux required four pressings before the grapes were exhausted.”

“Monsieur Fourneaux is not here. I am.”

Climbing down the ladder from the pressior, I suppose she’ll quit and take the others with her.

Louis rides into the barn and dismounts a stunning white horse with a silver muzzle and tail. “I suppose no one told you it’s a monsoon out there.” Taking off his soaking hat, he looks as disreputable as the rest of us, a day’s growth of beard, new wrinkles around his smile.

I run to him, tripping over my skirt in exhaustion and joy. “When I didn’t hear from you, I invented all sorts of gruesome stories.”

He catches me, laughing that warm-hearted chuckle. “They threw me in prison again as a French spy. Took months to break out and borrow Ghost, here, to get home.”

Home, he says. The workers watch us with sly smiles and sniggers.

I introduce him. “This is Louis Bohne, everyone, our brave traveler who sells our champagne in Russia.”

Louis takes off his fur hat and bows good-naturedly. “Mesdames, c’est mon honneur.”

They applaud, and I tell them, “Go home now and rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Louis takes Ghost’s reigns and follows me down the hill while he regales me with his escape. I laugh until my ribs hurt, imagining the Russian guard locked in the outhouse, yelling through the quarter moon cut in the door while Louis steals his horse.

A fresh wind wafts Louis’s scent of spiced tea and calvados over me, and I breathe it in. My shoulders relax, the tension burrowed in my belly releases. With Louis here, we just may get through this harvest and make something of it. And if we don’t?

Well, Louis is here.

***

Settling Ghost in the stable, we walk across the courtyard, and Louis chuckles.

“What’s so funny?” I ask.

“I arrived in Reims yesterday and went to your office to find you. Your clerk sent me over to the cooper. The cooper said you’d just lectured him to toast the wine barrels darker. He told me to try the glassblower, who filled my ear with how you forced him to use extra glass, so your bottles don’t break. I started off to the cork cutter but figured he’d just complain. Then I realized it was harvest time, and you’d be here in Bouzy, pestering the vendangeurs and pressiors.”

I tap the side of my nose. “Blame it on Le Nez...sticking my nose into everything.”

“Bless Le Nez.” He bobs down and kisses my nose. “Our champagne is better than ever.”

He kissed me. My heart skips like a stone skimming across a lake. Don’t make a fuss. He just kissed my nose like he would his horse. Keep walking. “Where did you stay last night?”

“The Cockatrice Tavern.” He looks out at the scarlet grapevines.

“That seems to be your favorite place to stay when you come to Reims.”

His cheeks color the shade of the vines. “The German barmaid makes sauerbraten almost as good as back home.”

My cheeks heat as well as if I caught his fever. “Well, tonight, you’ll stay with me.”

Inside, my house smells different than this morning, and it’s not just my brighter mood. There are fragrant geraniums on the table and beeswax candles burning on the mantle. Fresh-baked bread, goose pate, and something savory on the woodstove make my stomach flip-flop.

“What’s all this?” I ask.

“Must be Lizzette. I stopped here before I went out to the pressing barn. She said you’ve been very anxious for my return.”

“I must have given her the wrong idea.” Smiling flirtatiously. The dance between us awakens a part of me I thought was dead.

Lifting the champagne chilling in the ice bucket, he unravels the twine holding the cork. “I need this after the long trip I had getting back to you.” He turns the bottle for a subtle sppfft of the cork. A smile spreads across his face when he pours my coupe. “No snakes in this bottle.”

My hand trembles from fatigue and happiness, spilling my champagne. Laughing, I sip the foam. Our eyes meet, but neither of us speaks, the moment too full as it is.

“The Russians are famous for long, pointless toasts. Want to hear one?” His smile softens the sunburnt crevices of his face.

“Only if you translate to French.”

His chest heaves. “Two birds head south for the winter, but one proud bird says, I’ll fly straight to the sun. She flew higher and higher but soon burned her wings and fell to the fields.” Clinking my glass, he drinks his coupe and reaches in his bag for a stack of orders. “From Russia.”

I’m stunned, leafing through them. “But I thought the Tsar banned French wine?”

His muscular shoulders rise. “Russians love champagne too much to sacrifice it for long. They figure the Tsar will lift the ban soon enough. And when he does, we have to be ready to ship.”

I wish I could ship immediately, as I’m still desperate for funds. “I was worried you’d leave me since we changed ownership.”

Scoffing, he entwines his fingers through mine. “Barbe-Nicole, I’m not looking for greener pastures. In fact--” He searches my face...then shakes his head.

Lizzette serves Beef Bourguignonne at the dining table, fluttering her eyelids at me like mating butterflies. She approves of Louis, I see.

To accompany the beef, I open a bottle of aged champagne I’ve saved, never having the right moment or the right person to share it with until now. “This was the first champagne we made ourselves eight years ago.”

Louis tilts his head back and allows the wine to slide down his palate. His Adam’s apple moves on his strong neck, a sensual move that becomes more sensual the more champagne we drink. What exotic Russian woman watched him do that and could not resist kissing his neck? How long will I resist?

As we savor the champagne, Louis enthralls me with raucous anecdotes of Russians, their dancing bears, reindeer sleighs, snow sculptures, and soirees that end with a champagne breakfast.

“The French are stuffed shirts compared to the Russians,” I say.

“That’s why Russians are addicted to your champagne.” He grabs my hands, his face inches from mine, smelling of leather and blazing fires, black tea, and calvados, like the night we met.

“Let’s get more comfortable,” I say, moving to the overstuffed divan, taking off my boots and stockings and curling my bare feet under me.

He feeds a large mossy log in the fire and sits next to me, taking my tiny feet in his hands. “You are so cold. You’ll catch a fever.”

His thumbs knead my arches and rub the soreness from my feet. His fingers circle my toes, reaching places that have never been touched. I moan with pleasure as gnawing desire moves through my core and prickles my nose.

A meow at the front door makes me jump up to let in Felix. He climbs Louis like a tree, kneading his chest. I don’t return to the divan but stand on the warm hearth, trying to slow my ragged breath. Every nerve in my body aches with desire. He’s my traveler, nothing more.

“Did I do something to offend you?” he says.

“Why do you ask?”

Felix nudges his neck, and Louis strokes him. “Barbe-Nicole, I’ve done everything in my power to help you. When François died, Moet Champagne offered me a job. I refused so I could see you through that terrible time. I redoubled my efforts, hiring more travelers and opening as many accounts as you could handle. I survived a shipwreck and spent months in jail. Authorities threatened my life. I’ve lived in squalor and loneliness at temperatures of fifty below. My personal life consists of eating week-old stew at a German tavern telling stories to a barmaid. Stories I wanted to share with you.” His eyes wallow in pain. “I thought you understood why I was doing it.”

Returning to the divan, I grab his hand. “Louis, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. You have to know how much I look forward to your letters.”

He sets Felix on the floor. Reaching around my neck, he draws me close and kisses me, his full lips moving on mine. His beard brushes my cheeks, igniting my yearning.

“Marry me.” His mouth hovers near mine, warming my lips with his breath.

I did not expect that.

His lips touch mine, kissing me tenderly at first, then intensifying with years of unrequited passion.

As his kisses reach deeper, I think, Yes. Yes. Yes.

He whispers in my ear, “We’ll have another child and run the business together.”

A child? My business? How do these figure in my feelings? I gather my shawl around me. “It’s late. We’ve had a lot to drink,” I say, confused.

He looks as confused as I am. “I thought we had something here.”

“Of course, we do, Louis, but I just took over the company, and I—”

“Don’t want to share it with a lowly wine traveler?”

“Louis, let’s talk in the morning with clear heads.”

He strokes his beard, frowning, his passion snuffed by my hesitation.

Louis offers me the companionship and love I’ve needed so badly in my life, yet his proposal carries consequences. Dire consequences. Of course, I want Louis, but do I want him enough to give up my business? The Napoleon Code is clear. Ownership of a widow’s business transfers to the new husband.

Pushing up from the divan, he stumbles to the door. “I see I assumed too much.” He takes his fur hat and coat from the rack.

His discouragement pains me. “You know I care about you, Louis, but if I remarry, there’s a problem with ownership of the winery. Let me look into it.”

He trudges out into the night, leaving the door gaping.

Leaning against the doorframe, I watch him pass the stable. “Don’t forget to take Ghost,” I remind him.

He turns around. “Ghost is for Mentine. You wrote me you wanted to give her a white horse, so I brought her one. I thought we would be a--” He dismisses me with a wave. “I’ll be at the Cockatrice Tavern.”

Damn the Napoleon Code.

***

35

Quand on a pas ce que l’on aime, il faut aimer ce que l’on a.

When you don’t have what you like, you have to like what you have.

Louis doesn’t come around for the rest of the harvest. His absence only deepens my longing. I don’t want to live without him. But, first, I have to confirm what the Napoleon Code dictates about a widow’s property when she remarries. After François died, three-quarters of his property reverted to Philippe. As long as Philippe remained a partner, it hadn’t been necessary to change the winery ownership legally. But all that changes if I take a husband and not to my advantage.

The night after harvest, I walk the vineyards and sit against a rock. The stars glimmer above like beacons of wisdom. Especially François’s star, blinking and winking its celestial message. François speaks just as surely as if he’s sitting with me. He doesn’t want me to be alone any longer.

The next day, I drive the rig to Reims to ask Papa about the Napoleon Code. How infuriating the Little Devil has a stranglehold on my business and, even, whether I can marry.

The Reims Cathedral bells clang madly. I find Papa in the unfinished wing in full mourning attire, knees on the floor, trowel in his hand, the mineral smell of quarried stone and wet cement from the tin bucket.

“Can you hand me that tile?” He points, and I set it in front of him.

“Why are the bells ringing?” I ask.

He slathers cement and presses the tile into place. “We lost the Battle of Bussaco in Portugal. Napoleon’s papers report 522 dead, 3,612 wounded, and 364 captured, which means France lost quadruple that.”

I collapse on the bench, my problems insignificant in light of this evil.

He scrapes the trowel on the bucket. “And, Napoleon calls himself the angel of victory.” His hand presses his lower back as he straightens up. “Reims has lost nearly three-thousand men and boys by my count. When we went to church, grieving mothers and wives surrounded us, wailing and tearing at our clothing. They begged me to stop Napoleon--as if he would listen. Barely got your mother home. Your mother was so terrified she is hiding in her bed.”

“How can they blame you?”

His thumb hooks under the badge embossed with the Revolution creed: Liberty. Equality. Fraternity. “Napoleon made me mayor; they know I have his ear.” He coughs. “I don’t blame them. They’re heartbroken. Exhausted. Hungry.”

“Can’t he see the destruction he is sowing in France? Killing our men, starving his own citizens? His arrogance is dumbfounding.”

Papa wipes his hands on a towel. “Now, with his royal Austrian wife and an heir on the way, he is related to all the sovereigns of Europe: the Romanovs, the Bourbons, the Habsburgs, the Hanoverians.”

“Of course, all those royals want to overthrow him.”

“He’ll rule all of them. Just a matter of time.” He asks for another tile.

“Which one?” The tile shapes and sizes boggle my mind. “How you know which one to use in your puzzle?”

“The square one.”

I handed him the tile, and he spreads cement on it.

“Back when I visited Versailles, I bowed before the king, my eyes focused on the long expanse between us. That Versailles floor was an epiphany of sorts. All different shapes and sizes of tiles, fitting together in harmony, paving a path to his majesty.”

“How did you figure out the pattern?”

“Patience.” He fits the tile in a corner. Lunging up from the floor, he falls back and tries again.

I take his arm and slowly pull him to a stand.

“Don’t get old.” He shakes a crooked finger.

I kiss both cheeks. “You can’t get old, Papa. You have to finish this wing.”

He crosses himself. “I swore on my mother’s grave I’d finish this before I die.” Reaching into the pocket of his mourning jacket, he pulls out a flask, takes a long drink, hands it to me.

The sweet, spicy scent of Calvados, Louis’s tonic. Odd coincidence. “I don’t remember you liking Calvados.” I drink, savoring the sweet burn down my throat.

“Louis brings me a bottle every time he returns,” Papa says.

“He comes to see you? Why?” I take a long swig from the flask.

“Tells me what he’s heard on the road.” Papa sits on the bench, takes the flask. “He had a fascinating question for me a couple of weeks ago.” His eyes crinkle on the edges.

“And what was your answer?” Sweat mists between my breasts.

“I gave him my blessing.”

I sit next to him. “But if I remarry, what happens to my winery?”

He winces. “The Code does not favor women, as you know. A widower can remarry to replace the labor of his wife, but a widow retains her business only so long as she remains a widow.”

“So I would lose the winery.”

“Legally, it would not be in your name, but does that matter? The sacrifice might be worth the cost.” He taps my nose. “Trust your own instincts on this one.”

I kiss his cheeks. “I’ll go say hello to Maman while I’m here.”       Walking out on the Versaille floor, I search the puzzle for a solution. If I marry, I lose the business. If I keep the winery, I lose Louis. The old zugzwang.

***

“Maman,” I knock on her door. A moan inside. “Maman, may I come in?” Hearing mumbling, I push the door open. Painted organdy panels undulate from the ceiling like vines, just as Maman had directed her decorator from Paris. She wanted her bedchamber to be a flowering jungle. A noxious, fetid smell stings my nose and waters my eyes. Wigs on stands surround her bed, like beheaded victims of the revolution. Reaching into the green canopy shrouding her bed, I gasp at the sight. Her hair is wispy and thin, exposing a celadon tinge to her peeling scalp.

She thrashes about in her dark green gown, clawing at her high frilled neck, grunting like a feral hog. Must be her gown strangling her. I work at her tiny buttons, but her agitation makes it impossible to unfasten them.

She’s tearing at her gown, and the seam rips a bit. I bite the fabric to continue the rip, but my lips sting and burn. When I can finally pull the dress off, she howls a horrifying scream. Oozing craters cover her body, smelling bitter and rotting. Her skin has withered away, leaving a swamp of blood and puss.

“What is all the commotion about?” Papa pushes aside the hanging panels to reach us. “Oh. My. God.” His hands hover over her ulcerous body in shock. He drops to his knees at her bedside. “Oh, my dear.”

“How long has she been like this?” I say.

His head dodders. “I have no idea. She sleeps here in her room.”

Maman shivers, but blood and infection soak her bedcovers. I search for a clean sheet, but her wardrobe is packed with gowns, gloves, and hats, all in the same green. She squirms on the bed, naked and whimpering.

Panic rises in my throat, remembering François. This can’t be happening again. “Help me move her to another bedchamber.”

Papa lifts her in his arms and carries her next door, where we lay her under the covers.

“Fetch Doctor Girard,” I tell Papa. “No, Doctor Blanchard, he’s younger, and his education is current.”

Papa stares at Maman with his mouth open.

“Go, Papa. Bring back Doctor Blanchard.”

Finally, he leaves.

I pull over a chair to her bed. Her hand flails over the edge. “Is that you, Barbe-Nicole?”

I take her hand, riddled with green veins. “I’m here, Maman. The doctor is on his way.”

Why haven’t I noticed how bad Maman has gotten? I shun her invitations, avoiding her like the plague.

“You are self-centered and stubborn,” Maman would say.

And she would be right.

***

When Doctor Blanchard insists we wait outside, I take Papa to the library and pour him a cognac.

“I cannot lose her, Barbe-Nicole.” He grips the glass, staring into the amber depths. “Whenever my duties crash in on me, she shares some juicy gossip or sings a silly ditty to make me laugh. When I want to quit, she reminds me why I can’t. When I want to escape, she takes me on a rowboat in Parc du Champagne. My days do not begin without her glorious smile, and I cannot sleep until she kisses me goodnight.” He talks and talks, and the more he talks, I’m sure he must be talking about someone else. But through his love, I see Maman anew. If I wasn’t so mulish, maybe I’d see she’d always had my best interests at heart.

After our second cognac, the young doctor finds us in the library, his cheeks flushed.

“Will she be all right?” I ask.

“Only time will tell. I applied a poultice of butcher’s broom, marshmallow, olive leaves.”

Papa slips out to see her.

“What made her sick?” I ask.

“Arsenic poisoning from the green dye.”

“Maman is obsessed with green.” I should have insisted she stop wearing it. How callus I’ve been. “Why are they still using arsenic to dye clothing?”

“Haven’t a clue. It’s deadly stuff.” He rubs his bloodshot eyes. “I’ve treated the poor souls who work with the pigment. Their nails turned green, and skin was eaten away.” He picks up his bag. “Keep your mother away from anything green. And change her dressings every day.”

I walk him out and thank him, closing the door and leaning against it. Couldn’t I look beyond my nose to see Maman was killing herself with vanity? Le Nez truly is a curse if it closes me off from everyone to pursue my own selfish goals.

Marching into Maman’s bedchamber, I yank down the tree panels, flowering vines, green taffeta bedding, curtains, strip the wallpaper off the walls. Making several trips, I pile them in the incinerator and light them on fire. The fumes make my throat raw, and I don’t care.

I almost lost Maman. I could have sensed this sooner if I hadn’t shut her out. She could have died from that pigment with no one the wiser. Ashamed of my behavior, I will make it up to her somehow.

***

When I return the next day to change her dressings, Papa meets me at the door. “She’s been asking for you.” He grabs my hand, eyes brimming. “She’s almost gone, Barbe-Nicole.”

“No, Papa, she will pull through.”

He drops his chin to his chest, overwhelmed by grief.

“Papa, I have to confess something. I smelled the poison on her and ignored it. I should have come to you.”

He stares blankly, then pins my shoulders to the wall. “Your Maman only wanted the best for you, and you fought her all the way. You only think about what you want, never caring how you hurt people. Now, your arrogance and self-centeredness have cost your mother her life.”

Each charge stabs my gut. “You are right, Papa. I should have made her stop.”

His arm points out the door. “Leave this house.”

“No, Papa.” I grab his lapels. “Let me see her, at least. I need to see her.”

“Your Maman is dying. This is not the time for sorry confessions.” He grips my shoulders. “Your mother will leave this earth with a smile on her face.”

Jerk out of his grasp, I run up the stairs, hearing him sob.

Maman lies in bed, great globs of poultice tethered to her wounds. Sentir le sapin, the smell of fir coffins. The smell overwhelms me, but I refuse to block it out.

“Ah...my little Le Nez.” Her bony fingers pat my hand. “Make you a bargain.” She wheezes.

“Anything, Maman.”

“I’ll give up green if you get remarried.” She smiles with thin green lips.

My chest collapses with regret and shame. From birth, Maman has been the voice of reason and decorum that I fought.

I squeeze her hand gently. “Then, I’ll go see my man friend about his proposal.”

“About time.” Her laugh turns into a weak cough.

“You’re right, Maman. It is.” I kiss her cheeks, no longer plastered with hearts and flowers, her sores exposed to the light.

We bury Maman in the Ponsardin gravesite next to the labyrinth. Papa has a double headstone carved with both their names, birth, and death. His dates, incomplete.

“You tried to tell her, Barbe-Nicole. She would not listen,” Jean-Baptiste tries to console me at the funeral. “You can’t blame yourself for decisions people make in their lives.” His periwinkle fingernails press his pin-tucked shirt. “I know that better than anyone.”

After the funeral, Papa retreats into his unfinished wing and locks the heavy planked door behind him. Every day, I knock and leave him lunch on the threshold. I pray someday he will open that door, and we’ll eat together.

I plant a gardenia bush beside Maman’s gravestone, the scent I shunned. Now, I cherish her eternal perfume.

***

Why did it take a tragedy to show me how much I love Louis? He’s been my loyal companion since François died, helping me grow the winery. And now that the war has ruined sales, he asks me to marry him. It isn’t the winery he wants. It’s me.

Hitching Ghost to the buggy, I make the trip to the Cockatrice, a white stucco Bressummer supported by heavy cross beams. I see why Louis feels at home here. Chickens chase and peck a grassy yard: white Alsatians and German bantams with big puffy chests and exotic head-dresses, bright orange coats with black tails. A couple of roosters sport bright red combs and wattles. The horse dips her head in the trough for a deserved drink.

An old German man with mustard-yellow trousers and a Bavarian vest limps out of the tavern, carrying a pottery bowl on his belly. He scatters feed, and the chickens scramble.

“Good morning,” I say. “I am looking for Louis Bohne.”

“Who wants him?” he asks.

“I’m his employer.”

“So, you are Veuve Clicquot.” He eyeballs me up and down, and I feel my hackles rise.

“I didn’t come for an inspection. Is Louis in the tavern?” The double doors are latched, with no sign of life in the one window.

He throws feed at my feet, and the chickens surround me. “Herr Bohne waited to hear from you for more than a week. Sat right here in this chair watching the road and reading Don Quixote.” He snorts. “I know he respected you, Veuve Clicquot, but I’m here to tell you, that was no way to treat an employee. Not even a lowly salesman.”

“We were finishing harvest and the crush.” And my mother died, but I will not use her as an excuse. “Louis knows how busy we were. He could have come to see me.”

“A man has his pride. It seemed very important that you come to him.”

“Well, I’m here now. Let me speak to Louis.”

The German snorts. “When you didn’t come, he got howling drunk one night and proposed to my barmaid, Beatrice, pretty girl with big--” He cups his hands at his chest. “Took her back to Manheim.” He throws another handful of feed, and the chickens peck at my boots.

“You must be mistaken. Louis asked me to marry him.” Feeling suddenly nauseous, I hold my stomach.

“Evidently, you didn’t answer.” His grin misses a couple of teeth. “My barmaid wasn’t so persnickety. She was sweet on him for years, but he always had a shine for you.”

“Did he say when he’d be back?”

“Beatrice quit her job, took everything with her. I’ll miss her. She’s a great cook.”

The chickens start to poop around my boots, thicker and stickier than normal droppings, yellow and black. The hideous smell makes my stomach roil. “Where’s the latrine?”

He points to the door with the moon and star.

But I can’t make it and retch in the weeds.

***

Petting Felix at my desk, daylight wanes through my draperies, lengthening the shadows on the bookcases. I can’t say I blame Louis. I can’t blame fate either. I, alone, determined the daunting destiny before me: widow and sole owner of Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin.

Papa and Philippe want me to close down the winery. The wars make it impossible to do business. The ledgers don’t lie; expenses surpass sales. But what about the hundred or so widows who count on working at my winery to support their families?

Swallowing my pride, I write Louis at his address in Manheim, picturing him there with his beautiful bride. My teeth clench as I congratulate him on his marriage. I ask him to stay on as Veuve Clicquot sales manager.

But, he doesn’t write back. I guess I have my answer. Louis is gone.

***

THE GREAT COMET OF 1811

With a coma a million miles long, the Great Comet was visible for nearly a year.

Napoleon’s supporters named it Napoleon’s Comet, portending his triumphant domination

over Europe and absolute rule. Those who opposed Napoleon feared the same.

36

Avoir une peur bleue de

To have a blue fear

When 1811 dawns, Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin sales are dismal. More than a decade of war, drought, famine, and economic warfare has finally collapsed around us.

In the spring, I receive a letter from Louis. He and Beatrice have been on a honeymoon, but he’s ready to resume his duties. He suggests a sales trip through Austria, since France’s new Austrian Empress has given birth to Napoleon II, crowned king of Rome at birth.

Relieved not to lose him entirely, I write back. “All my hopes are centered on you, on your enthusiasm and industry, convinced that if you cannot succeed, no one can.”

But, a month later, Louis writes from Austria: “You have no idea the misery to be found everywhere. In the Tyrol, I was told I deserved to be hanged for offering French champagne after the damage Napoleon has wrecked on their country.”

My other travelers sound no better. Monsieur Boldemann is doing his best in Italy.“You cannot imagine the amount of cajolery, flattery, and lying I have to go through to persuade these people.”

Charles Bahnmeyer writes: “Poland poverty stricken. Prussia overstocked. As for Turkey, I made a trip through Albania and was knifed there trying to convince a Turk he should drink champagne. The Tyrol? Switzerland? Old Holland? Denmark? In truth, there is nowhere to sell Veuve Clicquot champagne.”

Louis’s following letter spurs me to action I’ve wanted to avoid.

“Today, I travel in vain; receiving for my troubles only doors shut in my face, complaints and no orders for you. Everywhere I go, I see business is absolutely dead, towns ruined, and roads full of travelers who bewail the times. I have made no sales anywhere, and I feel I should quit this job before it kills me.”

Dipping my pen in the inkwell, I write all the travelers a letter of dismissal, except Louis. Sadness paralyzes me, my hand barely moving across the parchment.

“I regret to inform you that we cannot pay your salary now in these times. We will pay commission on sales only. We must reduce our costs and wait for better times to come.”

I’m glad François is not here to witness the cruel strangling of our winery. Nay, of the entire European continent.

In Holland, Louis cannot sell French wine to save his life, so he travels to Belgium and writes, “I see wine-merchants, inn-keepers, private buyers, and even lawyers. I offer, cajole, lower my prices. I almost insist, but it is as though I have done nothing at all. I am lucky if they treat me with even common civility.”

I cannot afford to pay Louis any longer, but I’m unwilling to cut him loose. There would be no other work for him anywhere, and now, he has a family to support. Digging into my trunk, I find the box with Grand-mère’s emerald necklace.

I take it to Papa, whose anger at me has mellowed over time. He is the only one who can help me since, as a Baron, he mingles with nobles and Bourgeoisie.

“I need to sell this to pay my employees.” I slide the open box across the table.

He frowns. “Hang on to it, Barbe-Nicole. It won’t bring you what it’s worth in these times. Nobody’s buying jewelry, now.” He pushes the box back. “You have no idea how valuable this is, handed down for generations. Your Grand-mère bypassed all her heirs to give it to you. You can’t let her down.”

“Grand-mère’s dying wish was that I use Le Nez.” I hold the necklace to the light, and the emerald reflects every shade of green from chartreuse to jade. “I still see her shaking her crooked finger at me, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’” Returning the necklace to its box, I slide it back to him. “Will you help me, Papa? Can you sell this for me?”

***

When he returns from Paris, Papa is pale and shaken. “Napoleon was celebrating his victory at the Battle of Wagram. He boasted how he brought in five thousand more soldiers to fight the Austrians. After the bloodiest battles, he brought Archduke Charles to his knees. Europe hates us all the more for it.” He wipes his brow. “After his war talk, Napoleon was in a most extraordinary mood, so I brought out the necklace. He admired it and showed it off to his courtiers as I explained the heritage. He thanked me for my loyalty and gave it to a steward to take to his safe.” His teeth clack together. “I didn’t dare tell him that I came to sell the necklace.” He frowns.

I grab his arm. “No, Papa. You did not give my necklace to Napoleon.”

He wipes his brow. “The next day, I screwed up the courage to tell the Emperor it was your necklace, and I was there to sell it.”

“What did he do?”

“He said I was lucky he was celebrating his victory and feeling generous.” He pulls the box from his pack and hands it to me. “I’m sorry I could not sell it, mon chou.”

Hugging him to my chest, I feel his faltering heartbeat. “You were brave to do that for me.” But my mind reels thinking how I can keep my employees fed without the money from the necklace.

With no market for expensive champagne, we make still wine and sell it cheaply around France. Trading wine for grain, we bake loaves and loaves of bread to sustain us. We plant rutabaga, turnip, parsnip, and potato and store them for the long winter. Papa gives me several sheep to flavor our stews. Together, my widows and I survive the bleak year. Yet, there is still no sign of peace.

***

In March, a smell wakes me before dawn. A perfume so potent and pure, it smells like hope. Budbreak, the blossoming of the grapevines, doesn’t stop for tyrants wagging their sabers.

I walk through the vineyards, my nose tingling with the intoxicating scent that signals a new beginning: buds, then leaves, then grapes, repeating nature’s cycle. Intense and vibrant, it smells as if all the grapevines in France have budded at this one exquisite moment.

Hearing a rumble of thunder, I look up to see a massive ball of fire roaring across the starry sky. The Great Comet of 1811, they’ve reported about in the newspapers. My heart stands still at the breathtaking sight, experiencing God’s word incarnate: powerful, absolute, spectacular. This intoxicating budbreak must herald this magnificent oracle.

My fingers trace my tastevin anchor of clarity and courage. The comet proves there is something bigger and grander than us. Something more powerful than Napoleon waging endless wars on Europe. In a startling epiphany, I know we can and must carry on.

The Great Comet of 1811, my stunning signal of hope, is with us all year. Prophets, poets, and priests debate its meaning and power, attempting to identify and categorize the ominous sign. Many call it Napoleon’s Comet, foretelling his reign over Europe and the end of the earth. Well, if the world is going to end, I’m going down fighting.

If anyone would stop to smell the grapevines, they’d understand what the comet really means. The astonishing scent evolves every day: in March, the aphrodisiac of tender buds, in May, the lushest green-leaf smell. By August, the opulent aroma tells me it’s time to harvest these perfect grapes—no mildew, no bruising, so flavorful, my palate quivers with pleasure.

The Great Comet brings us the biggest harvest in a decade. The vendangeurs pick from dawn until evening, then crush grapes until midnight.

Lizzette and her staff serve our hungry vendangeurs French bread, cheese, and sausage for morning break, roast chicken and vegetables for midday dinner. At night, French-onion soup and as much Bouzy Rouge as the women can drink.

The Great Comet intensifies the flavors and aromas of the harvest. Chardonnay grapes burst with orchard essences of apple, pear, and peach. Pinot Noir exudes the flavors of plums, cherry, raspberry, and black tea. But it is the undervalued Pinot Meunier grapes that excite my nose with natural smokiness and hints of vanilla.

We use this magnificent juice to blend our first vintage wine using only grapes from 1811. I name it Cuvée de la Comète and brand each cork with the Great Comet shooting across the sky. In my heart, I dedicate it to Grand-mère, François, and Maman, who are helping me along the way. Cuvée de la Comète must be our salvation.

***

When the harvest and crush are complete, every crevice of my body aches. I should go to bed and not get up for three days. But I’m afraid the Great Comet will vanish and be gone forever. So, after a reviving supper of Lizzette’s duck confit, I climb the vineyard hill and spread my blanket. The sky turns from periwinkle to aubergine as the great comet streaks the sky.

“Lizzette said I’d find you here.” Jean-Baptiste startles me.

“I didn’t hear you come up,” I say.

“I’m light on my feet.” He leaps to the side, clicks his shiny heels, then joins me to watch the astonishing light show.

“I see a fiery goddess streaking across the midnight sky,” I admit. “Her hair flowing out behind for forty-seven million miles.”

He tilts his head one way, then the other, grimacing.

“What do you see?” I ask.

“The end of the world. Hébert left me for an Italian count.” The comet’s light illuminates his sardonic smile.

“You don’t seem that upset.”

Stroking his beautiful cleft chin. “Hébert was jealous of the time I spend with Theresa and our son, but I’ve grown to love them.” He lies back on the blanket. “I’m confused.”

“In my experience, love doesn’t always follow the rules.” Lying next to him, I gaze up at the swath of stardust. “The comet calms me.”

“Most people are terrified by it.”

“The comet connects us to something greater than our tiny lives, petty wars, and that Little Devil who makes life miserable.”

Jean-Baptiste screws open the pewter flask I gave him, etched with an anchor. “To the end of the world.” He takes a swig.

“The Great Comet foretells something monumental.”

“Pray tell.” He hands me the flask, and I sip the brandy.

“Something amazing happened this harvest season. No blistering sun to burst the grapes, no relentless rain to mold them. Just perfect, clear days for the leaves to soak up the sun, cool nights to keep the sugar levels stable.”

“And you credit the comet?”

My arm follows the comet’s arc. “My goddess blessed my vineyards with her stardust.”

He scoffs. “More likely, the goddess granted you a last wish before the end of the world.”

“If I make the finest champagne the world has ever tasted, and there’s no one left to taste it, what’s the point?”

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” he counters.

“Theory of immateriality.” I grin and pass him the flask. “This comet ignited something in me, Jean-Baptiste. Despite Napoleon, despite my calluses, despite the glut of unsold wine in my cellars, Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin is my dream, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let anything squelch it.”

Jean-Baptiste kisses my cheek. “I love it when you get a fire in your belly.”

“So do I.”

But with Europe embroiled with Napoleon’s wars and no end in sight, it will take more than a bellyful of fire to succeed.

***

SIXTH COALITION WAR

1812-1814. Tsar Alexander betrayed the Treaty of Tilsit signed with Napoleon and reopened trade with England. In retaliation, Napoleon amassed the largest Armée ever assembled, one-million soldiers conscripted from France, Poland, Austria, Italy, Bavaria, Great Britain, Switzerland, Portugal and marched them nineteen-hundred miles through Russia. But Russian armies retreated eastward, burning their own towns and farms before the Grande Armée could pilfer food, medicine, and supplies. The more Russians retreated, the more determined Napoleon was to conquer them. When his Grande Armée finally reached Moscow on September 14, 1812, they found the

city abandoned and burning, set ablaze by the Russians to thwart him.

With temperatures dropping below freezing and a continent away from Paris,

Napoleon sent letters to Tsar Alexander to surrender.

The Tsar refused to answer.

Emperor Napoleon to Tsar Alexander, July 1, 1813

“For eighteen months, you have refused to explain anything. My ear will always be open to peace negotiations...

you will always find in me the same feelings and true friendship. I pity the wickedness of your advisors

who have given you bad advice. I offer Russia a truce on the most liberal grounds.

The private feelings I bear for you are not the least affected by these events. I remain full of affection

and esteem for your fine and great qualities and desirous of proving it to you.”

The Red Man brings Napoleon a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne, setting it on the table at Petroff Palace, where he watched Moscow burning.

Napoleon examines the bottle and fingers the Clicquot anchor branded into the cork. An anchor in chaos and confusion, she’d told him in Reims. “Where did you get this?”

“Your soldiers raided Baron Kozietulski’s manor.” The Red Man leers. “It seems a certain widow has conquered what you have not.”

“Exporting wine to our enemies is illegal and punishable by death,” Napoleon says. “How did she make it through British blockades when we can’t get our ships through?”

“My question exactly.” The Red Man’s voice quakes with a ferocity that rattles Napoleon’s bones. “I’ve been too patient with you. Your victories are worthless unless you can conquer all of Europe.”

“Have I not delivered what I promised until now?” Napoleon says, massaging the crick in his neck. “I need more time to conquer Russia, now that the Tsar has betrayed my trust.”

“I gave you ten years, and you’ve taken thirteen. I grant you one last chance to complete your execution, or I’ll withdraw my protection and let your enemies devour you. I’ll find another desperate leader to accomplish my bidding.”

The Red Man vanishes into the shadows as if he is a figment of Napoleon’s imagination. Napoleon’s dream to rule Europe was certain with the Red Man’s advice and protection. But that dream has become a nightmare from which he cannot escape.

***

37

Ne mets pas toustes oeufs dens le Mémé panier.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

1812. The 1811 champagne tastes of pure nectar. Crystal-clear and naturally sweet, tiny bubbles burst on my tongue.

“The Cuvée de la Comète will be the finest wine we’ve made,” I tell Jacob as we blend. “Use the best bottles and dense corks. And store them in our coolest crayère.” François would be proud.

“But Madame, we haven’t sold our wine in so long there’s no room left.” Chalkdust and lamp oil smudge his glasses.

Jacob is right. We’ve walked every inch of these crayères, and they are packed. I polish his thick lenses with my apron until they are clear, then hand them back.

“Keep bottling, Jacob. I’ll find somewhere to store the new vintage.”

As I approach Hotel Ponsardin, a long procession of carriages is leaving. Thousands of Reims’ citizens are heckling them. A gold-on-gold carriage passes me with a child-like woman inside. Empress Marie-Louise. No Napoleon.

As soon as the last of the carriages leave, Papa commands the servants to close the gates against a tide of angry citizens shaking their fists and jeering. He grabs my arm and pulls me inside the house. Locking the door and leaning against it, his chest rises and falls against his fine brocade jacket, Napoleon’s lion crest emblazoned on his gold sash.

“What is it? What happened?” I ask.

“Last week, Napoleon ordered me to raise money for the Grande Armée. He demanded I collect a tariff from every business and provide a list of those who did not contribute.”

“And you couldn’t collect any money?”

“I had to collect from everyone, or they’d be punished.” Sweat drips from his brow. “I took every extra franc our citizens had to pay for a war they don’t want.”

The window above us shatters with a jagged rock that strikes Papa’s head. Blood seeps through his white hair. An avalanche of rocks pummels the house as I help him across the atrium.

My sister, Clementine, bends over the railing of the mezzanine balcony, her eyes puffy and red. “What’s happening?”

“Clementine, what are you doing here?” I hadn’t seen her since Maman’s funeral when she clung to me like a lost child.

“I needed Maman. I thought I’d find comfort in her room.”

Another window breaks, glass flying through the atrium. Clementine shrieks and runs down the stairs, her frail body silhouetted through her organdy chemise gown.

“Go to the library,” I say. “No windows there.” We run down the hallway, ducking rocks and shattered glass. Once inside, I bolt the heavy paneled door behind us and take a deep breath.

Clementine examines Papa’s head, wiping his blood with her chemise.

“It’s nothing, Clementine. Just a scratch.” He pats her arm.

“I told you it was too treacherous to play both sides, Papa,” I say, collapsing in Grand-mère’s chair by the hearth, fingering her lace loom. “Now you’ve put us all in danger.”

“They’re protesting Napoleon,” he says. “The police will round up the rioters and lock them in jail.”

“Who else knows about your dual loyalties?” I tear a hangnail from my pinkie, a drop of blood springing from the spot.

“There are many Royalists in Reims, but I must protect their identities. I just hope they understand that Napoleon forced me to collect the war tariffs.” His fingers shake as he fills a pipe, spilling tobacco on the table and rug. His harsh Turkish tobacco smells like manure, unable to buy sweet English tobacco for a decade due to the British blockade.

I pour us St. Germaine liqueur. “Mother Holle, goddess of the dead who owns the elderberry bush.” I smile bravely, sharing Papa’s myth from a happier time.

Papa guzzles his drink and pours another. Clementine leaves hers untouched, a million miles away, as if it’s all too much. Wish I had a lavender sachet to soothe her. Wish my matagot, Felix, was her to comfort me.

As soon as I wish it, Felix arches his back on the rolling library ladder. I scoop him up in my arms and stroke his sleek body. “How in the world did you get here?”

“Felix naps here in the afternoons.” Papa guzzles his third St. Germaine. “He keeps me company while I read.”

When Felix goes missing from my office, I have pictured him chasing mice or jumping the tiled rooftops of Reims, but he’s been here with Papa, keeping him company.

I put Felix on Clementine’s lap. He circles several times, then curls in a ball and pretends to sleep; his long ears perked to the slightest sound.

Papa takes a long draw on his pipe, coughs, and lets out a long stream of wretched-smelling smoke. “Were you coming to tell me something, Barbe-Nicole?”

I sit next to him. “Since we haven’t been able to sell much wine the past few years, all of our cellars are full--”

“So, you want to use our crayères.” He shakes his head. “I’m afraid that’s where the Royalists meet.”

“You can still meet there, I just need to store my wine.”

“I’m sorry, mon chou, but I cannot put your champagne above our security. Five million have died in Napoleon’s wars already.”

My heart shrivels. “You can’t abandon me now when I need your support.”

He tamps more tobacco in his pipe. “If you start loading bottles into the crayères under Hotel Ponsardin, the entire town will take note, especially after today. Napoleon has spies everywhere. We have to wait until the Sixth Coalition War puts an end to Napoleon or Napoleon puts an end to Europe as we know it.”

Clementine lays her head on his arm.

No time to argue or feel sorry for myself. I need to find a place to store my Cuvée de la Comète I get up from my seat.

“You can’t go out there, Barbe-Nicole.” Papa strokes Clementine’s hair. “The mob will tear you limb to limb.”

I scoop up Felix from Clementine’s lap. “I’m not the one they want to kill, Papa.”

But the crowd doesn’t agree. Walking across the courtyard, holding Felix tight to my chest, my eyes focus on the tiny iron door beside the gate, the exit with the gate closed. The mob reeks of festering frustration, starvation, and raging disease: typhus, cholera, smallpox. They jeer and jut clubs at me. My insides curdle like sour milk. Rocks bruise my body as I reach the iron side door and pull out the key. Rioters try to push the door in on me, and I can’t let them into Hotel Ponasrdin.

“Let me out,” I yell over their din. “I have nothing to do with Napoleon.”

“Salope! Chatte! Traitre!” They spit at me and shake their fists.

Felix leaps from my arms and runs into the carriage house. I chase him into the darkness, calling his name. He yowls at the far end, his arched back silhouetted against a patch of light. When I reach him, he rubs against my ankle. Rotted wood paneling has left a gaping hole. So that’s how he’s been getting into Hotel Ponsardin. He slips through, and I get down on my belly, forearms crawling through the dirt. I pray no rioters see me escape.

***

Finding no other space to store our wine, I write Louis immediately. “I need to liquidate our stocks. As of now, sell wine for whatever price you can get, and I will double commissions since the price will be low.”

Louis and the other travelers work their hardest to send in orders, which I’m practically giving away. I ship them out as fast as we get them, trying not to look at the pitiful invoices. The vintages before the Great Comet were not the best. Too much rain, flooding, and mildew. Good riddance.

But the meager shipments still don’t clear enough space in my crayères. I move older wine to barns and pray volatile temperatures will not ruin it. A risk I have to take to protect my Cuvée de la Comète.

When things settle down, I visit Papa. Dressed in mourning, he attends a dozen funerals a day for Reims’ soldiers killed in the wars, no bodies to bury, just a letter from the Grande Armée. Soldier’s widows receive only the name, face shape, height, military position, and cause of death, sealed with Emperor Napoleon’s likeness.

“Let me show you something.” Papa walks me to his secret wing of Hotel Ponsardin.

Inside, I smell quarried stone, hewn wood, olive oil, lavender, beeswax. The travertine floor gleams like a pathway to heaven. Ceiling beams are sanded and oiled. Great tapestries hang on the walls depicting the grape harvest: women carrying baskets of grapes on their heads, men pressing grapes, a dog lapping grape juice from the trough. Purple velvet draperies hang at the arched windows. Upholstered chairs surround a round table cut from the center of an ancient oak. Six-foot logs burn in the large hearth.

Papa’s sighs heavily. “Now that I finally finished this room, the Royalists can meet here. And, you can use our crayères to store your wine.”

“Oh, Papa, you are a savior. Our Cuvée de la Comète is boiling in the barn.”

He turns his back, shoulders heaving.

“What’s wrong?” I place my hand on his arm.

“Nothing.” Waving me off. “Better load the bottles in the crayères tonight when it’s cooler.” His head slumps when he walks out, not himself.

Rounding up my crew of widows to help Jacob, I instruct everyone to move the champagne bottles with the utmost care, so they don’t agitate the gases. When Papa doesn’t appear all night, I worry something is afoot. My wily, courageous father seems to have lost his nerve, and fear is our worst enemy.

***

Making an armée uniform is a long, involved process. Papa parcels out sheep’s wool to the spinners, twenty or so women at their wheels, whistling and singing in the block-long factory. The spinners twist dyed wool into yarn. The yarn is threaded on the looms, where weavers weave the woolen material. Then, cutters use sharp scissors to cut patterns. Seamstresses stitch the pieces together, treadling with their feet and feeding the wool under the needle. The finished uniforms are folded and crated.

Papa’s cheeks are over bright, his eyes hollow and bloodshot. Stooped shouldered, and holding his lower back, he instructs the cutters, then crosses the factory to fix a broken loom, then carries cut material to the seamstresses. He’s been working triple shifts.

I wave at the older women I’ve known since I was a child, but there are hundreds of young girls I don’t recognize. “How is it going, Papa?”  As if I can’t see he is exhausted.

“More uniforms,” he says under his breath. “A hundred-thousand uniforms to be shipped to Poland immediately.”

“But you just sent a big shipment, didn’t you?”

“I’m afraid so,” he says, with a flat voice. “Napoleon buries soldiers in their uniforms.” He walks back for another load, red in the face and puffing.

Citizen Bernard, a spinner I’ve known for years, smiles at me with a gold tooth she wears like jewelry. “You’re looking healthy Madame Clicquot. Your business must be good.”

I shake my head. “No one has money for champagne, and neighboring countries hate us.”

“True enough.” She winds wool on the spindle. “I just hope our blessed emperor is victorious, or we’ll be dancing the Hopak kick and eating Weiner Schnitzel.” The spinners laugh.

Blessed emperor? How can they praise the Little Devil?

Papa drops a heavy basket of wool near the next spinner, Adeline, a smart girl of sixteen. He doubles over, hands on his knees. Too old for this.

Careful not to make a fuss in front of his employees, I lead him into the office. He sits in his swivel chair, trembling and wheezing. His desk is littered with bills, letters, and newspapers.

“Why hasn’t your bookkeeper cleaned this up?”

“I told you. All men under forty have been called to join the Grande Armée to fight Russia.”

I throw away the newspapers and start to separate invoices from letters. “Have you answered this correspondence?”

“My hands shake too much. And the numbers swim on the page.” He leans back.

“Why didn’t you tell me you needed help?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Barbe-Nicole.” He swipes his hand across his desk. Papers fly, ledger books fall on the floor, his inkwell breaks, spreading a puddle of black ink. His fingers grasp his thinning hair. “Napoleon will win this Russian campaign and force us to make more and more armée uniforms.”

“Papa quit talking like that.” Holding his shaking hands steady. “You’ve survived the revolution, the Reign of Terror, and Napoleon’s wars by taking care of the people of Reims. We’ll survive this war. We always do. But you need help here at the factory unless you want to die of a heart attack.”

Looking out to the warehouse, I see Adeline, the young spinner, working diligently.

“Adeline can handle your bookkeeping, and Madame Barnard can be plant manager. We’ll promote the best spinners, pattern makers, and dyers to manage their departments.”

He grimaces. “A little drastic, isn’t it?”

“What’s so drastic? Having women managers?” I scoff. “What about me?”

“You are different, mon chou. You’ve always been different.” His hands plume his hair like a quail.

“And because you thought I was different, I believed it and ran my own company.”

He scratches his head, and his feathery hair stands on end.

“Trust me, Papa. Let the women help you.” I march out and start their training.

***

38

Manger corbeau

To eat crow

1814. My vineyard workers set bonfires in the gullies and carry torches through the vineyards to protect the budding leaves from frost. The smoke makes my eyes water as Lizzette, and I drive the wagon among them, serving up hot potatoes and saucisson sausage roasted over the fire to keep their hands warm, hot spiced wine to keep their spirits up.

We keep up the vigil through the night until the sun rises over the horizon. When the danger of frost has passed, Veuve Lavigne dismisses the workers for a nap. Lizzette and I drive the wagon back. This morning, we must finish packing a shipment, and the workers will be in the barn already. As we crest the hill, I see a carriage parked in front.

“Who has the nerve to call on me so early?” I ask Lizzette.

A broad-shouldered man jumps down from the carriage--Louis Bohne. My stomach skitters like a stone across a pond.

I tuck smoky hair under my bonnet. “Do I look as bad as you do?” Soot smudges Lizzette’s face.

“Worse.” She spits on her apron and wipes my cheeks, making me laugh, giddy with exhaustion and the hilarity of meeting Louis looking like a ragamuffin. I suppose he won’t mind. He’s seen me out-of-my-mind with grief. He’s seen me bossy and brash. He’s seen me wallowing in the muddy vineyards, shoveling grape skins out of the press, or rolling barrels about in the chalk caves. I rejected him outright, and still, he remains my loyal traveler. My loyal friend.

Louis waves and I leap from the wagon, running, rocks slipping under my boots. I expect him to run toward me, but he turns and helps a woman down from the carriage. Must be his wife, a German lass in a peasant blouse and embroidered Tyrolean vest, lush curling hair to her waist, snowy white skin, and a bosom rivaling the Goddess of Liberty herself. And she cooks. Merde. The girl reaches for a bundle from the carriage that she cradles in her arms. Louis puts his arm around his family, the picture glowing like a blasted Fragonard portrait.

Could have been me. Forcing my lips to turn up at the corners, I doubt it resembles a smile. I walk toward them, but my ankle turns under, shooting a searing pain up my calf, and I fall.

Louis runs to catch me. “You’re exhausted. It’s not a good time.” He glances over his shoulder, then back at me. “We’ll come back later.”

I gird my strength. “Nonsense. Introduce me to your wife.”

His Adam’s Apple swallows hard. “Madame Clicquot, meet Beatrice and our daughter Gabrielle.”

Beatrice can’t be a day over twenty, smelling of peaches. I reach to shake her hand, then notice my dirty palms. “Let me wash up, and I’ll meet you for breakfast. You know where the dining room is, Louis.” I wobble inside as quickly as my tender ankle will allow.

My chest radiates heat. What did I expect to feel when he returned? Feelings don’t evaporate because I will it. “Get ahold of yourself, Barbe-Nicole,” I mutter, sponging off the sweat and grime of the night.

***

Louis is waiting for me at the breakfast table, batting a lavender sachet back and forth with Felix like schoolboys in the field. He throws it down the hall, and Felix chases after it.

What if Louis doesn’t like my plan? Of course, I don’t require his approval, but what if he doesn’t approve? Will I plow ahead as I always do without heed to what anyone thinks?

The sideboard smells delicious under the silver domes, but my stomach churns nauseously. “Go ahead and serve yourself, Louis.” Taking a chocolate croissant to quell my butterflies, I pour coffee from the pot, three lumps of sugar, heavy cream.

He sets down a plate brimming with sausage and eggs, potatoes and corn, and starts to eat.

“Where’s your family?” I ask to be polite, but I’m happy to have time alone with him.

“Lizzette set them up in the guest cottage to rest.”

I sip my coffee which has become cold, the sugar cloying. “A wife and daughter. You’ve been busy.”

His fingers rake through his hair. “You made it clear our relationship was strictly business.” He takes another bite, swallowing before he chews. “As long as the orders come in, what do you care? Can you tell me anything about your travelers’ lives? Is George in Italy married? Or Paul in Sweden? Did you know that Charles broke his leg?”

“Charles sent me three orders last week,” I say.

“My point exactly. That’s all you want to know. How many orders. I care about that, too, but there’s more to life than business.” Waving his forearm to the side, he knocks over the sugar bowl and breaks it on the stone floor. “I’ll take my leave.”

“Wait.” I grab his wrist. “George’s wife is a farm girl from Sicily, and she’s with child. Paul married his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth Ann. He calls her Beth. I sent Charles a chess set to play until his leg heals.”

He huffs and sits down. “I just don’t know how to work together now.”

“The same as we always did?” I want to reach out and tousle his copper curls, tell him it will work. I can’t lose Louis again.

He’s the one to reach out, covering my hand with his. “Our daughter is to be christened this Sunday at the Hautvillers Abbey. I would like you to stand with us and be her godmother.”

The longing in my heart curdles like spoiled cream. “Oh, no, Louis. I couldn’t.” How can he expect me to a godmother to his child?

“Please, Barbe-Nicole.”

Biting into a gooey chocolate croissant, I take my time chewing. “What do you hear about Napoleon and the Grande Armée now?”

“Apparently, the Tsar burned down Moscow, so the Grande Armée has no supplies to survive. Napoleon is camped out in Petroff Palace, pouting like a jilted lover, sending the Tsar love letters begging to meet with him.”

My sinuses tingle with certainty. “It’s a zugzwang, like in chess. Napoleon gave all he had to fight the Tsar. But the Tsar outsmarted him and left Napoleon without a move to defend his title.”

“Napoleon will just march his armée home and regroup.” He scoops up his last bit of eggs on his baguette.

“Winter has begun. If Napoleon stays in Moscow, the armée will die of starvation or freeze. If he retreats, he admits defeat. Either way, Napoleon has lost. There is no next move. Zugzwang.”

“I wouldn’t bet against Napoleon,” Louis says.

“I’m betting on Veuve Clicquot. We’re ready to conquer Russia.”

He laughs.

“I’m not joking, Louis. This is exactly what we’ve been preparing for. Let me show you.” I take him out to the barn where forty women cushion bottles with straw in crates, nail them closed, and load them into the wagons while singing a merry Trobairitz song Lizzette taught them.

Louis plants his feet wide, fists on his hips, mouth pursed as if there’s a whistle stuck inside.

I tell him. “Thanks to your hard work, Russia has been yearning for French champagne since Napoleon made it illegal to export.”

“Where’s this shipment going?” he asks. “I haven’t sold anything near this number of cases.”

“I hired a ship in Rouen to sail to St. Petersburg as soon as I give the signal.”

“Illegal, dangerous, and reckless.” Louis strokes his beard. “If the British Royal Navy doesn’t confiscate our wine at sea, Sweden, Prussia, or Russia will. This is no time for foolhardy moves while hatred for the French rages.”

Taking a bottle from the trolley, I show him the cork. “Ever wonder why the Clicquot anchor brands our corks? The anchor symbolizes clarity and courage during rough seas. When everyone else is running around saying the sky is falling, that is the very time we need to be bold.” I pop the cork and pour the golden liquid in my tastevin, aromas of pear, crème brule, and brioche. “Taste.”

As he sips the champagne, the wrinkles relax between his eyebrows. “What is this nectar?”

“The finest vintage we’ve ever made. Cuvée de la Comète.” I pour more in the tastevin. “The year of the Great Comet brought the best growing season we’ve had in a decade, not too hot, not too cold, not too much rain. My women harvested double the crop we’re used to.”

“Cuvée de la Comète is champagne fit for the Tsar.” Louis sips and holds it in his mouth before letting it slip down his palate. “Russians will adore it.” He fingers the anchor etched on the bottom of the tastevin.

“Ten-thousand bottles in this first shipment,” I say. “Our agent in St. Petersburg has agreed to meet it at the docks. Then, I’ll send another ten thousand. Veuve Clicquot will be the first champagne in Russia after the war.”

Louis takes my shoulder and turns me away from the workers, his voice tense. “If this shipment gets confiscated, it will be the end of Veuve Clicquot. Napoleon has not lifted the law against shipping champagne out of the country. You will be thrown in the Bastille or worse.”

“If I don’t do this, it will be the end of the winery anyway.” I chuck my chin at my workers. “These women have been working for bread and lamb for the past year. I owe it to them, I owe it to our travelers. The shipment must make it to Russia.”

“You are not going to back down on this foolish idea are you?” He glares at me, and I glare at him. Finally, he breaks away and rubs his eyes. “Damn it, Barbe-Nicole.” He presses his fist against his mouth. “I’ll accompany the shipment.”

“No, Louis.” My heart pounds in my throat. “It’s too dangerous. I couldn’t ask you to leave your new family.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Could they stay here with you in Bouzy?”

I huff. The perfect pact. He risks his life, and I take care of his family. “Fair enough.” Pulling out my keyring, I hand him a skeleton key. “Your family can have the cottage. Beatrice and Gabrielle need a home of their own, and I can get to know them better.”

He throws back his head with a hardy laugh. “Something tells me you had this in mind all along.”

I smile. “I wouldn’t have forced you if you didn’t want to go.” Reaching for a crate. “Here, I’ll lay the straw and you put in the bottles. It’s better if we work together.”

He snorts. “You sure about that?”

I snatch straw from the haybale. “Oh. And, I would be honored to become your daughter’s godmother on Sunday.”

“That means a lot to me, Barbe-Nicole.”

“You have a beautiful family, Louis. I’m happy for you.” Turning away before my emotions erupt, I stuff straw into another crate.

I see things differently since losing François and Maman. My stubborn streak doesn’t have to cost me my loved ones. Life can change in the flash of a shooting star, and the people we love can be out of our reach forever.

***

“On revisiting this spot where I passed my youthful days, and contrasting the peaceful condition I then enjoyed with the state of terror and agitation to which my mind is now a prey, often have I addressed myself in these words: ‘I have sought death in numberless engagements; I can no longer dread its approach; I should now hail it as a boon…nevertheless, I could still wish to see Josephine once more!”

-- Napoleon’s Letter to Josephine, from Bienne

Napoleon smells the Red Man beside him, or perhaps the stench is his own rotting soul. Hard to tell anymore. From the windows of Petroff Palace, he watches Moscow burn, relishing the sting of smoke in his nostrils. This was the Red Man’s intent all along; Napoleon’s own private hell where his hard-fought values of brotherhood, liberty and freedom disintegrate before his eyes. The world witnessing his demise.

Injured soldiers and dead bodies litter the streets of Moscow, and still Tsar Alexander has not answered his entreaties for peace. He thinks back to their time together after Tilsit, laying bare their shame about fathers who never loved them. He’d wiped a tear from Alexander’s cheek. The Tsar was so very beautiful in his sadness. Napoleon must find a way back to his heart.

“Dear sir, my brother! There is no more beautiful, proud city of Moscow: Your own Rostopchin set fire to it. I started a war against your Majesty without anger: one note from you before or after the last battles would stop my procession, and I would like to sacrifice you the advantage of being the first to enter Moscow. If your Majesty keeps some more of those past feelings, you will favorably receive this letter. Nevertheless, you can only be grateful to me for being aware of what is happening in Moscow. By this, my dear sir, my brother, I pray to God that he will guard your Majesty under his holy and dignified protection.”

-Napoleon

“You’ll live on in history as the Tsar’s whining whore,” the Red Man taunts, his breath melds with the stench of decaying flesh. “You are prostrating yourself at The Tsar’s feet.” His voice slithers like a worm into Napoleon’s brain. “He is using your weakness to humiliate you. You must crush him or be crushed with his indifference.”

“What do you know of brotherhood?” Napoleon sneers. He waits for Tsar’s reply. He’ll embrace Alexander as a true brother, and together they will form a new alliance.

On the 3rd of October, Napoleon tries again.

“I send one of my aides de camp to you in order to discuss several important matters. I hope that Your Highness will believe what he is to say to you, above all when he expresses the high esteem and particular respect, I have for a long time held for you.”

-Napoleon

October 19, snow falls on Moscow, blanketing the bodies and smoldering buildings. Alexander has long since moved to St. Petersburg, ignoring his letters. Napoleon orders a retreat.

“You’re a coward.” The Red Man’s raw and leering mouth never moves, yet his voice drills into Napoleon’s brain. “You must march the Grande Armée to St. Petersburg and conquer the Tsar there.”

The Red Man’s commands have brought Napoleon more power and glory than he ever dreamed, but at what cost? Three million soldiers have died. Another two million civilians.

“Winter is upon us, and we are seventeen-hundred miles from Paris,” Napoleon tries to reason with him. “Moscow has been destroyed, and there’s no food for my armée, no horseshoes for the horses.”

“You are letting weakness guide you.”

Napoleon pounds his fist on the desk between them. “The time for action has arrived. Stop thinking and go.”

“You’re playing into the Tsar’s strategy,” the Red Man wheedles. “He wants you to retreat. Take him by surprise in St. Petersburg.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I will leave Alexander a splendid surprise to remember me.”

Napoleon orders the armée to blow up the Kremlin for no other purpose than to leave Alexander his calling card.

He girds himself for the brutal journey across Russia with what is left of his Grande Armée, letting nothing deter him. Not the horses dying from exhaustion, soldiers slitting horses’ bellies and sleeping inside the carcasses to stay warm. Not his men trudging blindly through the blizzard, collapsing as their bodies freeze to death. Not his commanders’ lies when they report the soldiers are eating lamb and potatoes, when he knows there is no food to forage in this desolate land.

When the Grande Armée reaches Belorussia, only one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers out of six hundred thousand have survived. The soldiers turn on Napoleon, cursing and spitting at him. The Red Man guards Napoleon’s tent lest they slit his throat. When he receives a message that his enemies are waging a coup d'état to take over his throne, he abandons his armée and rushes back to Paris through Reims.

***

39

La vengeance est un plat que se mange froid.

Revenge is a plate best served cold.

Without Maman, it is left to me to decorate Hotel Ponsardin for Christmas. Lizzette, Mentine and the cousins pitch in, while Papa “supervises” and drinks an entire bottle of Calvados. The grand fir tree reaches the third floor, fully beribboned, candles clipped in place, ready to light from the wrought-iron staircases, when Papa is called to the front door.

When he rejoins us, his face is ashen. “The North Gate has been burned and the Russian and Prussian armées are marching toward town.” He sits on the stair, head in his hands.

“Mentine, stay here with Grand-père.” I take my coat and scarf from the closet. “The soldiers will march right past my crayères, and Jacob is preparing a shipment of champagne to St. Petersburg. I’m sure they’d like nothing better than to help themselves.”

“Jacob is there?” Lizzette flushes. “I’m coming with you.”

Pushing the waLizzette and Jacob we hastily build a rock wall over the entrance to the crayère. When we finish, I send them on to camouflage our other crayères, and return to Hotel Ponsardin.

Thousands of Russian and Prussian boots pound the cobblestone streets of Reims, reeking of revenge, month-old sweat, festering blisters, the scorched smoke of the villages they’ve burned along the way.

When I return to Hotel Ponsardin, there are no lights at the windows, not even the servant’s quarters. The door is locked, so I rap the knocker.

Papa jerks me inside and throws the bolt on the door. “Napoleon sent a message he’s coming here to Hotel Ponsardin for the night.” He paces the entry, his fingers pressed into his forehead. “The Russians will tear this town apart searching for Napoleon, and when they find him here they’ll kill me, too.” His eyes wallow in fear and confusion. “You have to get out of here, Barbe-Nicole. Right now. Go to Bouzy and stay there.”

I grab my tastevin. Clarity and courage. “Where is Mentine, Papa?”

“She’s safe. Clementine took her.”

“But why is Napoleon coming here?”

He puts his finger to his mouth, still pacing. “You heard about the coup d'état against Napoleon?”

Horror strikes me. “What did you do, Papa?”

“We tried to restore the king while Napoleon was in Moscow.” Marching frantically, his voice raises to panic. “But they caught General Malet and sent word to Napoleon.”

I hold him still. “Calm down, Papa, or you’ll have a heart attack.”

“He must know I was part of the coup,” he huffs. “Why else would he come here?”

Our front gates screech, and I peer out the tiny window in the front door. A massive black and gold carriage drives through, the driver raging and whipping the horses.

Papa’s mouth gapes open, a fearful stink spews through his pores.

I push his shoulder. “Go. I’ll handle Napoleon. Run to the carriage house. There is a hole in the last stall you can escape through.” Papa doesn’t move, so I shove him harder and he stumbles over his feet running out the back of the house.

Taking a deep breathe, I gird myself, straightening the collar on my russet cape, waiting for Napoleon to debark the menacing carriage. How dangerous can he be, running from his disastrous war with his tail stuck up his arse? But the banging door knocker thrusts my heart to my throat. I open the door, calmly, so very calmly, ready to face Napoleon, but not this.

The Red Man stands a foot away, his skin scorched and oozing. When he recognizes me, his black eyes narrow to slits, his slash of a mouth sneering. What’s left of his nostrils flair as if to smell me, while he himself reeks of gurgling decay.

He moves aside and Napoleon steps up to the portico, bicorn hat askew, white vest spattered with blood, double-breasted coat cakes with mud and torn, three gold buttons missing. “Where is your father?”

“He’s been called away to a family illness. Typhoid, I’m afraid.”

He peers into the atrium, holly garlands wrapped around the railings, the decorated Christmas tree. His forehead wrinkles. “Enemy armies are taking over Reims. I need lodging for the night, food and shelter for the horses and my men.”

“I’m sorry, but Papa sent the staff away. It’s impossible to stay at Hotel Ponsardin tonight.”

Clamping his purple lips together, his face tenses like a fist. “Are you sure Nicolas Ponsardin is not in Paris?”

Stepping out to the portico, I lock the door behind me. “My sister’s husband is quite ill. He went to help them.” Thinking quickly how to appease him. “I can take you to my brother’s manor, right outside of Reims. He’d be honored to lodge you for the night.”

***

It’s midnight by the time we reach Jean-Baptiste’s manor. The household has long been asleep, yet, my brother springs to my aid in his jewel-buttoned nightshirt and lace stockings, his long blond curls drawn back with a periwinkle ribbon. He wakes servants to prepare the guest house, according to my direction. New feathers in the Emperor’s pillow, fire and candles lit, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in the ice bucket, window open an inch. Do not forget the window.

The two of us stand outside as Napoleon and his soldiers march in.

“Welcome, Your Excellency.” Jean-Baptiste curtseys low. “The master suite is ready for you.”

Walking ahead, I open the door, and check that everything is as I ordered: the fire blazing and window open a crack. Stepping back into the hallway, I let Napoleon pass.

“I do not need my guards,” he says. “I prefer to be alone tonight.”

“As you wish, Emperor.” Jean-Baptiste swirls his manicured hand.

The aide-de-camp throws back his shoulders. “I will stand guard at your door, sir.”

Napoleon draws his saber and whacks each of his shoulders. “You have served me well, comrade. But you will stay with the others tonight. I need my solitude.”

The soldier nods curtly and joins the others.

“All right then.” Jean-Baptiste pirouettes on his brocade slippers. “We’ll leave you to your rest.”

“Good night, Emperor,” I say, with a curtsey.

“Madame Clicquot, I wish a word with you,” Napoleon says. “Alone.”

“I’ll be along, shortly,” I tell Jean-Baptiste. He hesitates, and I wave at him. “Meet me outside. You can show me to my room.”

He slinks down the hallway, at the end turning back, his brows drawn together.

Napoleon clears his throat, his face taut and pale. “I am sure you are aware it is illegal to export champagne to Russia?”

“Of course, Emperor,” I say.

“Furthermore, it is an act of treason to France and your Emperor punishable by death.” His pupils expand to the size of musket balls. “As my armée marched across Russia, I was overwhelmed with thirst for champagne. My men would try to find some amenable substitute. Russian war prisoners wanted to please me, so they offered up their best. ‘Veuve’, they called it. In every flea-bitten town in Russia they offered, Veuve, Veuve, Veuve, as if it was the very finest and would please me.” He raises his saber and pokes the soft spot of my clavicle.

If this is the end, I must know. “And did it please you, Emperor?”

“Quite so.” He twists the blade into my neck. “Champagne is the taste of victory, great solace in defeat.” His knees buckle, and he girds them. “I wish I had a bottle this evening as I contemplate my destiny.”

“My finest vintage is chilling in your room, Emperor. Cuvée de la Comète.”

“Touché. Then I will spare your neck…tonight.” He sheaths his sword.

“Delighted to hear that, Emperor.” I step back, ready to take my leave.

But Napoleon is not finished. “You cannot hide from destiny, Madame, no matter the cost. Was I to deny destiny when it called me to the world stage? Perhaps I’m superstitious answering the call of fate, but, it is belief in oneself, the intuitive perception of one’s own value, which leads us to march onward without fear.” His eyes narrow. “My mission has not yet been fulfilled. Has yours?” He pushes open the door, and the Red Man stands in the corner.

The veil lifts from my eyes, and I know who he is.

“Please, Veuve Clicquot, won’t you join me for your champagne?” Napoleon says.

“My brother is waiting. I bid you good night, Emperor.” He alone must face his devil’s bargain.

***

Outside, Jean-Baptiste is flirting up the guards.

“I am tired, brother.” I take his hand. “Won’t you show me my room?” We walk across the courtyard toward his estate. When the guards are out of sight, I pin him to the stone wall and clap my hand over his mouth. “Can you keep quiet, no matter what we see and hear tonight?”

His cleft chin bounces up and down. Taking his hand, we circle back to the guest house careful the guards cannot see us under Napoleon’s window. Jean-Baptiste stands to have look and I grab him down, pressing my finger to his mouth.

We hear a voice as hollow as the wind. “Your time is over. You have lost.”

“I just need to talk to the Empress,” Napoleon pleads. “Marie-Louise will write her father to bring Austria back on our side.”

“You need a woman to save you?” The Red Man sniggers. “I misjudged you. You’re heartless enough to kill five million men in battle, but not powerful enough to convince the rulers of Europe to submit to your leadership.”

“I dedicated my life to you and your commands,” Napoleon pleads. “You owe me another chance.”

“You failed me.” A whirr and rumble rises like a tornado and the door slams.

Jean-Baptiste signals a cut at his neck. It’s over. But then, we hear the disgorging of a champagne cork from the bottle and flow of frothy bubbles. A toast to resolve their fight?

Napoleon’s stacked boot heels click on the wood floor, halting at the window above us. He drinks Veuve Clicquot from a crystal flute and gazes at the stars. Closing my eyes, I inhale his profound essence…a struggling heart, loss of love, loss of honor, sacrifice without reward. He pours himself another glass of champagne and returns to the window peering east toward Russia. I imagine Tsar Alexander at the other edge of the horizon…two Emperors contemplating each other from seventeen-hundred miles away drinking Veuve Clicquot champagne to bolster their resolve. Sweet, sweet satisfaction.

Napoleon raises a third flute of champagne to the cosmos. “Impossible is a word only in the dictionary of fools.” He glares at the stars as if they’re soldiers who must obey, downs his glass and shuts the window.

We run across the wet lawn, breathless and giddy. “It’s over. Napoleon lost.”

“All I heard was a surly coachman berating his master.” Jean-Baptiste winks. “I think Napoleon liked it.”

I slap his arm and head toward my buggy. “The Red Man is no coachman.”

“Where are you going?” he says.

“I have to ship some champagne to Russia.”

***

In two-days’ time we load the shipment of ten thousand five hundred bottles on a ship called Gebroders to Russia. Louis accompanies the shipment and leaves his family in my care.

Louis writes:

“The Gebroders is the first for many years to sail North out of Rouen. There is no sign of breakage and the weather is favorable, being cold for most of the voyage. The arrangements for my accommodation on board are so bad they are beyond criticism. There is not even a bed. I asked Monsieur Rondeaux to let me have a rough mattress and pillow, for which he will charge you. I did not ask for blankets or sheet, for my coat will serve me. I shall also claim for twenty tablets of soup, a quantity of potatoes and onions. Please pass on the enclosed letter to my wife.”

I write back immediately:

“I am desolate to hear that you are so badly housed aboard ship. I wish Monsieur Rondeaux had made better arrangements for your accommodation, particularly regarding your bed. I pray your voyage will be as short and smooth as possible.

I’m enclosing a letter from Beatrice. She is a lovely girl. I taught her to play chess while Gabrielle crawls around the drawing room like it is a horse track.”

A month later he writes from Elsinore, including a letter for Beatrice as always:

“In Kattegat we were stopped by a Danish frigate towing a Norwegian ship as war bounty. I held my breath as they inspected our ship, but they did not scrutinize the cargo, and let us go.”

By July 3, Louis finally reaches Konigsberg. He writes:

“It is with indescribable satisfaction that I inspected our samples before shipping on to our agent in St. Petersburg. Crystal rock water could be no clearer and the taste is indescribable. The Great Comet bewitched you, Sorceress.”

“Sorceress.” Regretting the chance I lost with him, I’m grateful our friendship endured unrequited love and six wars. Friendship may be the most precious love of all, giving and receiving without thought. I pick up reading where I left off.

“I’ll sell part of the wine here in Koninsberg to pay for the voyage. Tongues are hanging out with anticipation. The wine trade came to the hotel today, begging me to sell to them. I accepted five and a half Prussian crowns.”

Quadruple our normal price! I write him:

“I do not know how you managed to get five and a half crowns and I had to read it twice before I believed           it. I never expected such a wonderful return.

Mentine has found a sister in baby Gabrielle. They are inseparable. I found a secondary school for girls here in Reims so Mentine can continue her studies and live here with us.”

Us. My family is expanding.

In the next few months, Louis sends me orders for seventy thousand more bottles, and the other travelers send in phenomenal sales as well. My crayères, which were packed floor-to-ceiling with champagne, are now clearing out. After years of scraping by, money pours in like manna from heaven. And Napoleon…

***

THE BATTLE OF PARIS AND NAPOLEON’S ABDICATION

In 1813, the year following his disastrous defeat in Russia, Napoleon amassed another armée of four hundred thousand to fight the Sixth Coalition. Despite his marriage to Austrian princess Marie-Louise, Austria broke off their alliance with Napoleon and joined the coalition. The coalition armées fought for control of Paris in March of 1814. Napoleon surrendered March 31 and was forced to abdicate and go into exile. King Louis XVIII took the throne with the Charter of 1814, which included freedom of religion, freedom of press, an elected chamber of deputies and chamber of peers, and taxation voted on by the chambers.

Malmaison. 16 April,1814.

My dear Josephine,

I do not repeat what I have already told you. I then complained of my situation; I now rejoice in it. My mind and attention are relieved from an enormous weight; my downfall is great, but it is at least said to be productive of good. In my retreat I intend to substitute the pen for the sword. The history of my reign will gratify the cravings of curiosity. Hitherto, I have only been seen in profile; I will now show myself in full to the world. What facts I have not to disclose! I have heaped favours upon a countless number of wretches; what have they done for me? They have all betrayed me, one and all, save and except the excellent Eugene, so worthy of you and of me. May he ever enjoy happiness under a sovereign fully competent to appreciate the feelings of nature and honour! Adieu, my dear Josephine; follow my example and be resigned. Never dismiss from your recollection one who has never forgotten you! Farewell, Josephine.

-Napoleon

On April 20, 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte was banished to the isle of Elba.

40

Petit a petit, l’oiseau fait son nid.

Little by little, the bird makes its nest.

Autumn, 1814. As I walk out of the barn, the sun is setting on the final day of harvest in Bouzy. The last grapes have been pressed. The pressiors and vendangeurs gather in the gentle hollow where three hillsides join, the site of our harvest party since François and I began. The savory aroma of lamb and pig roasting on the spicy madrone bonfire makes my mouth water.

My workers chatter and laugh, the joyous sound ringing over the vineyards.

I see Mentine riding Ghost way up on the hillside, still searching every row of grapevines for Felix. He disappeared a week ago, and with harvest upon me, I haven’t had time to look for him myself. The setting sun glints off her blonde hair hanging loose, the blue sky silhouettes her tall, slim body riding side-saddle. So strange and wonderful to have her with me here in the country. François would be happy we are together.

When school starts up, she’ll live with me in Reims for the first time since she went away to the convent school at six years old. Beatrice and Gabrielle will join us there in the city, and Louis will come home for the winter.

Papa brings Philippe by buggy to the harvest party. It’s been years since he came. As if he’s twenty, Papa jumps down to help Philippe. He’s found new purpose with King Louis XVIII restored to the throne, the edicts of the people represented by the chambers of deputies and peers.

Philippe is frail. I take his arm and lead them down to the tables we’ve set up among the vines. “The harvest was bigger than the Great Comet vintage if you can believe it, Philippe.”

“But will the wine taste as wonderful?” He taps the side of my nose.

“I think you’ll approve. I blended the Great Comet wine into the cuvee.” I seat him so he can watch the festivities.

Papa looks past me. “Where is Mentine?”

“Searching for Felix.”

He rubs his hands together. “What are we drinking tonight?”

I laugh and nod to the wine table. “I put out a bottle of every vintage for the past fifteen years. You can try them all.”

My winemaker, Jacob, rings the big iron bell, and the workers line up for the buffet.

Mentine and Ghost gallop toward us, dust billowing from the ground. Ghost digs in his hoofs for a hasty stop.

“Mentine, you’ve become a hooligan out here in the country.” Papa huffs, helping himself to more wine.

Holding her apron in a bundle, Mentine slides off her saddle. “I found Felix.” She opens her apron wide. Felix blinks his gold-green eyes as if casting a spell. Six tiny black kittens mew and wriggle around him. “It’s a miracle. Felix brought us matagots!” Mentine says. “We have to feed them now, or something evil happens.”

Beatrice carries Gabrielle over to see the kittens. “We didn’t bring milk on the wagon. Shall I go back for some?”

“Bring the kittens over here, Mentine.” I head to the wine table.

Mentine spreads her apron on the ground, six hungry mouths mewing.

Beatrice sets Gabrielle down beside them. “Be gentle,” she says.

Taking my tastevin from between my breasts, I pour champagne in it and put it down for the kittens. The mewing stops as they slurp it up.

Felix licks my wrist, making me laugh. “You’ve been keeping a secret from us, haven’t you?”

“Didn’t you know Felix is a girl?” Papa smiles.

“Does he have to be a girl to have kittens?” Mentine squinches her aquiline nose.

I hold back a laugh. “Your grand-père will explain that to you later.” We move Felix and the kittens out of the fray and join the line at the harvest buffet.

After supper, Lizzette and her impromptu band shake tambourines and strum lutes. They sing a Trobairitz harvest song…working the earth, sun, rain and wind to make a wine that brings joy to your fellow men.

Only, I see mostly women as the bonfire flames brighten faces around the circle. Women. A hundred or more...widows of a man’s war. Velma and Renee, who work the presses, Yvonne with her two daughters, Citizen Bernard and Veuve Lavigne…the women clap their hands to the music, swaying, smiling, singing in harmony, just as they worked the harvest together. The widows are carrying on with their lives, even after their husbands fell. Even after the Little Devil Napoleon found his just reward, abandoned and lonely on the island of Elba, pining for Josephine.

Life seemed to stop when my husband died. But, slowly, with time...and family...and friends…we survive. And sometimes, we thrive.

--THE END--

EPILOGUE

There is so much more to tell about Barbe-Nicole Clicquot, it would take another novel. She remained a widow, growing her winery to extraordinary heights. Russian sales increased to two hundred thousand bottles a year. Barbe-Nicole Clicquot lived happily with her daughter, Mentine, and husband, the Comte de Chevigné, until the ripe age of eighty-nine years old.

Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin is a worldwide champagne company with sales in excess of three hundred thousand bottles a year. In 2019, Veuve Clicquot unveiled an international barometer that maps out the current state of female entrepreneurship: common prejudices, mental and structural barriers to be overcome, and how to get beyond them.

In 1814, Napoleon was ousted from France and banned to the island of Elba. In 1815, he escaped the island and took over the government for one-hundred days...until he was crushed in the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was permanently exiled to the remote island of St. Helena off the coast of Africa, where he dictated four volumes of memoirs under the title of Le Memorial de Saint-Helene, the greatest international bestseller of the nineteenth century. He died six years later, and his body is interred at Los Invalides in Paris.

June, 1817, St. Helena. “I have worn the crown of France, the iron crown of Italy; England has now given me a greater and more glorious (crown) than either of them—for it is that crown worn by the Savior of the world—a crown of thorns. Oppression and every insult that is offered to me only adds to my glory, and it is to the persecutions of England I shall owe the brightest part of my fame.”

--Napoleon to Malcolms

As legend has it, the Red Man found his next apprentice in Adolph Hitler, and we know how that ended. The Red Man searches for his next apprentice to this day.

Champagne Widows Reader’s Guide

1. How was Le Nez a curse? How was Le Nez a blessing?

2. What Le Nez traits did Barbe-Nicole use or overcome to succeed?

3. Barbe-Nicole inherited a tastevin from her Great Grandfather Ruinart. How did it help her on her journey? What does the anchor symbolize?

4. Why did Barbe-Nicole love Francois and accept his mental illness?

5. How was her relationship different with Francois and Louis?

6. Did you suspect the identity of Lizzette and her cousin?

7. What was Nicolas Ponsardin’s belief in politics?

8. What lessons does Barbe-Nicole learn over these seventeen years of tragedy?

9. What was Napoleon’s goal with the Napoleon wars from the first one in 1803 to the last in 1815?

10. Who was the Red Man, and what was his goal? Are you surprised the Red Man was recorded in history? Who else did he haunt?

11. Why were Barbe-Nicole and her mother oil and water? How does Barbe-Nicole’s attitude change?

12. Even before the French Revolution, French citizens were forced to choose sides between the Bourbon royal court and Revolutionaries. Which side did Nicolas Ponsardin choose and why?

13. What were the obstacles impeding Barbe-Nicole’s success in her winery?

14. What makes champagne so unique as a wine? Why is it more difficult to make?

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Other books by Rebecca Rosenberg:

THE SECRET LIFE OF MRS. LONDON

IPPY GOLD MEDAL AWARD

San Francisco, 1915. As America teeters on the brink of world war, Charmian and her husband, famed novelist Jack London, wres- tle with genius and desire, politics and marital competitiveness. Charmian longs to be viewed as an equal partner, but Jack doesn’t see it that way…until Charmian is pulled from the audience during a magic show by escape artist Harry Houdini, a man enmeshed in his own complicated marriage. Suddenly, charmed by the Houdini’s attention and entranced by his sexual magnetism, Charmian’s eyes open to a world of possibilities that could be her escape.

As Charmian grapples with her urge to explore the forbidden, Jack’s increasingly reckless behavior threatens her dedication. Now torn between two of history’s most mysterious and charismatic fig- ures, she must find the courage to forge her own path, even as she fears the loss of everything she holds dear.

BUY NOW : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072KRP7MN

GOLD DIGGER: THE REMARKABLE BABY DOE TABOR

DOUBLE GOLD for GOLD DIGGER! 2020 IBPA and IPPY Awards for fiction!

One look at Baby Doe Tabor and you know she was meant to be a legend of the Wild West and Gilded Age! She was just twenty years old when she came west to work a gold mine with her new husband. Little did she expect that she’d be abandoned and pregnant and left to manage the gold mine alone. But that didn’t stop her! She fell in love with an old married prospector, twice her age. Horace Tabor struck the biggest silver vein in history, scandalously divorced his wife, became a US Senator, and married Baby Doe at the US capitol with President Arthur in attendance.

Though Baby Doe Tabor was renowned for her beauty, her fashion, and even her philanthropy, she was never welcomed in polite society. Her friends were stars they hired to perform at their Tabor Grand Opera House: Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Lily Langtry, opera star Emma Abbott. Discover how the Tabors navigated the worlds of scandal, greed, wealth, power, and politics in the wild days of western mining.

BUY NOW: https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Digger-Remarkable-Baby-Tabor-ebook/dp/B07P6VXF97

SILVER DOLLAR (2022) THE SEQUEL TO GOLD DIGGER

by Rebecca Rosenberg

Baby Doe Tabor is left a penniless widow when her husband dies in 1899, leaving her with two daughters to raise in Colorado. On his deathbed, he urges: “Hang onto the Matchless Mine”, the only possession left of their silver fortune. She moves the family to Leadville, Colorado to work the silver mine, haunted with memories of her husband. The bank forecloses the Matchless and a mysterious investor takes over. Through furtive hunches and pure determination, Baby Doe encounters new love, devastating loss and discovers what her husband meant when he told her to “Hang onto the Matchless.”

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CHAMPAGNE WIDOWS SERIES

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The true stories of five French widows (from 1800 to 1950) who fight heartbreak, war, economic disasters, and bad harvests, to head their own Champagne wineries during times when it was unheard of for women to own any business. Through their intelligence, perseverance and creativity, they create wildly successful champagne wineries and ignite an explosive world-wide market for champagne.

Excerpt from GOLD DIGGER, THE REMARKABLE BABY DOE TABOR

Baby Doe and her brother escort performer Oscar Wilde to the Tabor Opera House:

Yes! Wilde really performed at both of Tabor's Opera Houses, and they were friends!

A rare fog obscured the imposing façade of the Tabor Grand.

“I lied.” Peter huffed big clouds of breath. “I wasn’t a stage manager in Chicago. I swept floors. I have no idea how to host a performer.”

“Why aren’t I surprised?” She frowned. “If you have trouble leave it to me.”

“But Oscar Wilde as my virgin debut?” He held his wrist to his forehead. “I adore the ground he walks on.”

He’d stirred himself into such a dither, she couldn’t help but tease him. “Remember what Mam says about fog?”

“Bad weather?” He blew into his clasped hands.

“Fog foretells that something hidden will soon be revealed.”

“Just the type of blither-blather I need right now.” Peter unraveled the fringe of his scarf. “What if I say the wrong thing? I’ve never met an Englishman.”

Thigh-high boots cut through the mist followed by a sweeping cape and wide-brimmed Cavalier hat adorned by an ostrich feather.

“Is that him?” Peter asked.

“Who else would it be?” Baby Doe giggled, astonished by the exotic man who towered above them by a good two feet.

Under his whirling cape, the famous English poet wore velvet knee-britches and a lace collared shirt. Long hair curled about his shoulders, framing a long, horsey face. His sensuous mouth and languid eyes promised wit, charm and something decidedly wicked.

“Mr. Wilde, welcome to Denver.” Peter bowed, looking rather like a court jester. “I’m Peter McCourt, stage manager of the Tabor Grand. I’m to be your escort.”

“Well, tra, la, la.” He held his hand out for Peter to kiss.

Peter pursed his mouth, but then he offered a handshake.

Wilde lowered long lashes. “You’re adorable, Peter. May I call you that? And who is this divine creature?”

“This is my sister, Lizz— This is Baby Doe.”

Still dizzy from her cracked head, she curtsied best she could, holding her plumed hat, remarkably like Wilde’s.

“The Almighty broke the mold when he made you two.” His half-lidded eyes goggled them. “So pretty. And bite-sized.” He snapped his large teeth, making her smile.

“I hope you’ll like your dressing room.” Peter cocked his eyebrow.

“Lead the way, pretty boy.” Wilde took his arm while his coach- man pulled a trolley of trunks.

“I see you plan to teach Denver about fashion, Mr. Wilde,” she said.

“Only one thing to know, darling girl. Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.”

“This way, Mr. Wilde,” Peter said.

Wilde leaned so close to her brother’s ear, he could have nibbled it. “Call me Oscar, dear boy. My closest friends do.”

Peter’s cheeks burned bright as he led them into the Tabor Grand. Wilde pirouetted, his cape swirling around him, taking in the magnificence of the theater. “Flourishes, upon flourishes, upon flourishes.”

“One can never have too many flourishes.” She pointed out their plumes. “I like your hat.”

“You’re the only woman in the world who’d have known the right hat to wear on an occasion like this, Mrs. Doe.”

“Not Mrs. Doe. Just Baby Doe.” So tired of slurking around, she told the truth.

“She’s divorced,” Peter boasted. “And recovering from a horrible trauma.”

“I prefer women with a past.” Wilde winked. “They’re always so damned amusing.”

Peter inserted a long skeleton key into the dressing room door.

“Don’t give up on love, darling,” Wilde advised her. “One should always be in love. That’s the reason one should never marry.”

“Oh, I’m in love, all right,” she confessed. “But he’s already married, so I’m living incognito.”

“Incognito is my favorite word besides outrageous.” He twirled a lock of hair on his finger. “We must continue this conversation over absinthe, later?”

“I know just the place,” she said, thinking of Gahan’s.

Peter opened the dressing room door. “We’ve booked a full house for your show tonight. Mr. Tabor was sorry to miss your show but promised to meet us at his theater in Leadville.”

Wilde circled the dressing room Peter decorated, stopping to sniff the sunflowers. Spreading goose-liver pâté on a toast point, he ate it and groaned with pleasure. He draped his body across a Parisian sofa with a salacious grin. “Someone did his homework. All my favorite things.”

Peter twisted the cage off champagne, and Wilde cackled. He held up his glass. “To charming siblings.”

“To charm.” She clinked his glass and set it aside. Champagne added to her wooziness.

“I don’t know that women are always rewarded for being charming,” Wilde said. “I think they’re usually punished for it.”

Peter read the Denver Tribune. “Regardless of what you have heard about Mr. Wilde’s character, he is more famous than any English celebrity except Charles Dickens.”

Wilde’s fingers fumbled tying his silk jabot. “The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing.”

Peter helped him tie his jabot. “Don’t worry, Denver’s ready to hear your advice.”

“It is always silly to give advice.” Wilde bit his lip. “But to give good advice is fatal.”

“On that note, we’ll let you rest before your performance.” Baby Doe gestured to her brother.

“Won’t you stay, Peter?” Wilde plucked a sunflower petal and held it out. “It would really help my jitters.”

Peter took the petal and waved her away. “We will meet you after the show.”

We? She shut the door behind her. Fog foretells that something hidden that will soon be revealed. Mam’s superstitions proved true more often than not.

BUY NOW: https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Digger-Remarkable-Baby-Tabor-ebook/dp/B07P6VXF97

About the author:

Rebecca Rosenberg lives in Sonoma Valley, California, where she first fell in love with methode champenoise. Over decades of delicious research with family and friends, she has explored the wine caves and cellars of France, Spain, Italy, and California in search of the essence of fine champagne. So when she discovered the real-life stories of the Champagne Widows of France, knew she would dedicate years to telling the stories of these remarkable women who suffered through losing their husbands, laws preventing women from owning businesses, and the ravages of wars, to take the champagne industry to new heights. Rebecca is a champagne historian, tour guide, and champagne cocktail expert for Breathless Wines.

Follow the CHAMPAGNE WIDOWS blog at rebecca-rosenberg.com or on Facebook at rebeccarosenbergnovels.

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