Zipporah's Daughter полностью

‘Are we going to wait for them to come, then?’

‘The crowd didn’t harm you, did it?’ I looked down at my plain dress. ‘No,’ she went on, ‘you look like a good servant … a woman of the right class.’

‘If they take the château … ’ I began.

Again there was that familiar lifting of her shoulders.

‘Lisette,’ I went on, ‘what’s the matter with you? You don’t seem to care.’

We went into the château. It was very quiet. I thought of the mob listening to the traitor Blanchard and I wondered if I should ever see it like this again.

I said: ‘What are we going to do? We must warn Sophie and Jeanne.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘And Tante Berthe …’ I went on.

‘She will be safe. After all, she is only a servant.’

Lisette had followed me up to my bedroom.

I said: ‘Lisette, did you know that Léon Blanchard was going to be there today.’

She smiled at me mysteriously. ‘You were always so easily deceived, Lottie,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Léon sent word to me. He and I were great friends … intimate friends. We had such a lot in common, you see.’

‘You … and Léon Blanchard!’

She nodded, smiling. ‘I knew him during those miserable years when I was at the farm. He brought me here.’

I closed my eyes. So much was becoming clear. I remembered the groom who had brought her and that odd feeling I had had of something familiar about him.

‘What does this mean, Lisette?’ I demanded. ‘There is something you are trying to tell me. What has happened to you? You’re different.’

‘I’m not different,’ she said. ‘I was always the same.’

‘You look at me now as though you hate me.’

‘In a way,’ she said reflectively, ‘I do. And yet I am fond of you. I don’t understand my feelings for you. I always loved to be with you. We had such fun together … ’ She began to laugh. ‘The fortune-teller … yes, that was, in a way the beginning.’

‘Lisette,’ I said, ‘do you realize that that wicked man with his mob will be marching on the château at dusk?’

‘What should I do about that, Lottie?’

‘Perhaps we should get away. Hide … ’

‘Who? You and Sophie with Jeanne. What about those sick men? I don’t suppose the mob will care very much about them. They look like scarecrows anyway. Jeanne and Tante Berthe will have nothing to fear. Servants don’t.’

‘I had decided we couldn’t go and leave the men.’

‘Then we stay.’

‘Lisette, you seem … pleased.’

‘I’ll tell you, shall I? I have wanted to so many times. It goes back a long way. We are sisters, Lottie … you … myself … and Sophie. The only difference is that I was never acknowledged as you were.’

‘Sisters! That’s not true, Lisette.’

‘Oh, is it not? I have always known it. I remember our father from my babyhood. Why should he have brought me here if it were not so?’

‘He told me who you were, Lisette.’

‘He told you!’

‘Yes, he did. You are not his daughter. He didn’t know you until you were three or four years old.’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘Why should he lie to me? And if you had been his daughter he would have acknowledged you as such.’

‘He did not because my mother was a poor woman … not like yours … living in a great mansion … as noble as he was almost … and he married her.’

‘I know what happened, Lisette, because he told me. Your mother was his mistress but after you were born. He first discovered you when he visited her and you were there. When your mother was dying she sent for her sister Berthe and asked her to take care of you. The Comte then brought Tante Berthe here as housekeeper and allowed you to stay here and be educated with us because of his affection for your mother.’

‘Lies!’ she cried. ‘That was his story. He did not want to acknowledge me because my mother was only a seamstress.’

I shook my head.

‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘he told you those lies because he wanted to excuse himself. I was never treated quite as one of you, was I? I was always the housekeeper’s niece. I wanted to be acknowledged. Who wouldn’t? And then … Charles came along.

‘You mean Charles, my husband?’

‘Charles. He was fun wasn’t he? But what a fool to go to America. He was going to marry Sophie until that disaster in the Place Louis XV. I thought when my father knew that I was going to have a child he would have arranged the marriage with Charles.’

‘The child … ’

‘Don’t be so innocent, Lottie. Charles saw us both at the fortune-tellers, didn’t he? He always used to say he liked us both and he didn’t know which one he preferred. He used to take me to those rooms which Madame Rougemont let to gentlemen and their friends. I was glad when I knew I was going to have a child. I was silly enough to think that it would make all the difference, that my father would acknowledge me and Charles would marry me. But what did they do to me? They made Tante Berthe take me away and they found a crude farmer husband for me. I shall never forget or forgive. After that I hated the Comte and all he stood for.’

I was so shocked I could only mutter. ‘Yet you wanted more than anything to be part of it!’