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Maron hears the news secondhand. Thirdhand. Fourth or fifth.
It starts with a pounding on the door. Gaspard hurries to answer it just the same as always, walking with all his weight on his heels, a mighty clunk-clack against the entry flooring. He opens the door, pales, and calls for the master of the house.
General de Jarjayes hears the news right there in the entry hall, in front of the staircase, and Maron hears him from her room—the sound of his grief a strangled cry.
She knows the truth of it immediately and feels helpless to do anything but sit and wait patiently for the news to reach her—to be the last one who matters to know of it, save the master’s other children. But that is the way of things, being what she is to this family.
An hour later, she hears it from Madame, who bore the order to march quietly but cannot do the same with her anguish. Maron knows, already, that one or both children are lost, but chokes on the news, anyway, just as her master did. Tears well up and tip over as she bows her head.
Both.
“Shot,” Madame says, trembling like an aspen in the wind. “Only a day apart. André and then Oscar.” Her voice cracks on her youngest daughter’s name and she buries her face against Maron’s shoulder.
Maron holds her tight, her own tears falling into Madame’s hair, and wonders how it happened. What their wounds looked like and where they were located. How quickly they slipped away from this life and left it for another.
“Of course they would go together,” Madame says when she straightens.
Maron reaches for her handkerchief and presses it to her stinging nose, nodding. “They’ve always done everything together,” she agrees.
The knowledge serves as some small solace for a moment as they look at one another. It’s a tiny anchor—not enough to secure the boat in the raging storm—but better than nothing.
Madame’s mouth moves then, as if to speak, but it takes her a long time to do so.
“The children,” she finally manages, handkerchief pressed to her face as if to hide it, the words tearing out of her throat like a wail. “They can’t be brought home.”
Even if the master wants them returned to see them buried, and surely that is the case, he can’t allow it. They are both traitors to the crown; he cannot lay claim to either of them.
She nods because there is nothing else to do.
Later, when Maron is alone, the long grief settles over her like a shroud.
She closes her eyes and thinks of André. The orphaned little boy she found in Arras waiting for her. She remembers seeing her daughter in him, that first day, in his dark hair and eyes and the tears that slid down the curve of his round face, but he proved he was his own person in the years that followed: his quick, easy smiles, the way his tongue often poked out of his mouth when he was trying to concentrate, his posture as he sat to listen to Oscar play the violin, chin resting against the back of his hand.
She misses him already, that boy who sat with her in the carriage and looked out the window, tugging at his stiff neckcloth—and the man who dined with her the night before he marched into Paris, voice calm and reassuring despite his clumsy handling of the meal.
She thinks of Oscar, next. The wailing infant she held in her arms to present to the master: a beautiful child who ended up being too smart for her own good. That smug grin that exploded across her face every time she got her way and shouldn’t have. The colonel facing off against André in the yard, laughing, and the brigadier-general standing at attention, hoping as always for her father’s approval. The woman, shy and hiding it behind barbs and complaints, who stepped out in front of everyone in a gown. Off to a dance and then back again to drown herself in strong spirits day and night. The sound of her pushing her glass away without filling it.
She misses her, too, that girl who couldn’t sit still at the kitchen table, even to eat a snack—and the woman who promised to return to tell her those words one more time…
How did they go again?
“I love you, Nanny. I always will. For all time.”
Strange that she can almost hear them, here, in the deafening silence of her room.