We rode slow in a black clad carriage at the head of a large procession towards Saint-Vaaste. The streets of Arras passed by my window, the swarms of people from all estates came out to watch among the red-roofed Flemish houses and governmental buildings. I myself had not been to Arras in years, despite my preference for it, as my father’s trips there did not often include me. One might expect that being the capital, my father would spend most of his time there, but as I looked at the faces of the city, I knew why he didn’t. My father despised masses of people, the hoards of nameless faces, the commoners, the petty governmental officials, servants, clergy, and anyone he deemed beneath him or begrudgingly above. He must’ve despised the expectation of forthcoming petitions, invitations to social events by the local nobility, and all the governmental and social burdens that came with the privileges of his position. As if he were still an absentee seigneur, my father delegated most of the administration of his lands to officials, and only visited Arras once a year. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the public even remembered our existence.

“Mother,” I began, wishing to distract my mind from the silence, “you should come live with us at Varlemont. Once everything’s in order.”

“Oh, no,” she fused with the handkerchief in her hands, dressed in black wool like Catherine’s, with a white lace fichu, her face and hair plain and un-powdered. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

That wasn’t the answer I expected or what I wanted to hear.

“You shouldn’t live alone.”

She turned her head to the window. Her gaze fixed on something in the distance, “I’ve considered entering a convent.”

“A convent? Why?”

“Well, when I was a girl, I wanted to become a nun,” she said before she gave a low laugh, “but Papa would not allow me.”

“Which convent?” asked Catherine, who was at her side.

“I don’t yet know, " she said, “but I’ve pledged a donation of a large portion of my dower to the Feuillants. I hope to live in Paris again, in any case. "

Strangely, when I was very young, I had thought myself of entering a monastery, though I did not consider myself any more pious than anyone else. Instead, what attracted me was the solitude, the security, and the safety of it contrasted with the King’s service. An easy life. Repetitive. Simple. While the vows posed little problem for me, the thought of being removed from my family did, and it did not take long for me to grow out of that idea.

The thought of my mother alone with strangers made me uneasy. I didn’t want that. If she joined a convent, what did that mean for me? What was to happen to us then? What if my brother did not return? Was I to be alone in Varlemont? In life? The image I held in my mind’s eye, of my family living an idyllic provincial life, began to twist into something corrupted and overcast. I could not see what was before me. What was the point of anything? I only calmed myself with the knowledge that my mother’s decision was not set in stone, and I had time to convince her otherwise. If only.

The immense gray stone walls of Saint-Vaaste towered over us all as incense light and fragrant filled the cold air. I watched the ceremony without any emotion. Placed with my family at the first pews, Father Renaud spoke in his low, authoritative voice underneath a draped canopy of velvet embroidered with crosses of silver thread and lined with ermine.

The ceremony took much time and expense to prepare. The interior of the cathedral was illuminated by tall white candles that reflected off the stained glass windows of the patron saint and my family’s arms. A sea of local nobility and bourgeoisie was behind us. The majority, if not all of them, were people I had never seen before in my life. After the ceremony, they came up to my family and I to express their sorrows and prayers. They did not even know me. I doubt they were all oblivious to my father’s hatred of the so-called petty gentry. I believed they must have thought the same about me. Their feigned solemnity, only out of seigneural obligation, or, perhaps, in the hope I would show them some sort of favor, unnerved me. What did they have to be sorry for? What did they know? Nothing. Nothing at all.

“Can we refuse ourselves a just pain when death surrounds us on all sides? When bitter grief strikes us through our clothes and into our hearts, casting us into a most profound night?”

I was blank faced during the insufferable speech. I had drank some gin before we departed, which left me in a warm, numb state that I preferred. My eyes weighed heavy and burned. While Father Renaud’s dry tone dragged on, I had to remind myself that the time would pass anyway, though my nerves became restless.

“Alas! Merciless death respects neither birth nor fortune! Artois has thus become its Victim! This man, distinguished by his birth and talents, alas! We won’t behold him anymore! Our Most Powerful Lord…Peer of France, Lord of Arras, the Provinces of Artois, Eu, and Saint-Valery!”

Thank the Lord.

“…His illustrious birth prevented him from falling prey to base and coarse passions. He knew that birth, however bright it may be, is only a flimsy ornament if it cannot create merit. He flowered in noble pursuits, a love of fine literature, the art of keeping silent, discernment, and sagacity. Artois did not allow himself to fall victim to false pleasures. He dreamed to conserve the splendor of his blood with a distinguished alliance with the famous house of Valois, where he received a Spouse so respectable by her personal qualities as those of her ancestors….”

My mother’s family did not show, but the Rohans did. They were placed at pews equal to ours at the front. I did not expect to see them, considering how entwined they were in the routines of Court and Society to make the journey north, but Catherine’s father and brother did, though I must’ve been more for Catherine’s sake than mine. After the ceremony, the Comte de Rohan came up to me privately to tell me he was there for me, and how he himself had lost his father at a young age. The conversation made me uncomfortable. Many people wanted to be there for me, it seemed. As if any of them were before.

“…His Majesty, who took pleasure in rewarding his favors to Artois, always a faithful and selfless subject, forgot nothing to elevate him, to make him respected in his kingdom, rex exaltavit eum… But with what zeal did he abandon the sweetness of Court, from our great King, to serve his most dear province! Not as a master, not as a Lord, but as a father, a brother, a friend…”

Jesus Christ, who wrote this?

My mother showed no expression as she clutched her rosary.

“How Christian his heart! He made religion the first duty of his life. Who could dispose of a fortune with more authority? A protector of widows, beggars, and orphans. He gave himself, like Job, to those sorry families that unforeseen circumstances reduced into humiliating darkness?”

My father did not care for piety or his faith outside of social expectations. He did not care for the plight of the poor or anyone else under his care. My mother, on the other hand, was the one who occupied herself with charity. She cared for the suffering of those women and children; it was she who convinced my father to donate large sums for her causes, attracted only to have his own image in Society improved as a result. A hot irritation rose inside of me. The year before, it was my mother who washed the feet of all our staff while my father sulked in his apartments. My mother donated the pin money she received from selling her parfilage to a society for widows who could not survive after their husband’s demise. My father did not care for any of it. I imagine if he were alive to see it, he would have grimaced at such a sentiment, or, would have been pleased to know he had fooled them so.

“…untouched by the horrors of death, he expressed himself again with his natural noble firmness, so that the sobs of his family could not soften. He spoke of those sentiments that distinguished him from other men. The knowledge of our Lord, the zeal of religion, his service to the King, the good of the state, the love of his Fatherland, union, domestic peace-”

I would’ve laughed out loud if I had not swiped my hand across my face. Catherine must have thought I had a surge of emotion come over me, as she had placed her hand over mine. I thought it improper to refuse her.

“- let us be reassured, as God is favorable to our wishes. It is those sentiments he placed in the hearts and minds of his illustrious children. The worthy son of Artois, heir to his spirit and virtues, succeeds his father to perpetuate our felicity. In him, we find a tender husband, a generous brother, and a defender of our rights. Grace to divine mercy, the illustrious name of Artois will live ever in our minds, and their descendants will forever receive the tributes their virtues deserve.”

Of which son was he referring? Couldn’t have been me.

“How are you faring?” Catherine whispered to me after the ceremony concluded.

“I’m fine,” I said flat.

“And you, Maman?”

My mother reached over to squeeze her hand and said, “I’m very well. Thank you, Catherine.”

Saint-Vaaste and the surrounding crowd moved further out of sight as we rode to my family’s hôtel in town. Its two-story bright yellow façade came into my window as we pulled into the courtyard. It’s smaller than our hôtel in Paris, as it served merely as temporary lodging for my father and brother when they visited town, but sizable enough to house us and the Rohans for the night.

Despite the solemnity of the times, Catherine hugged her father and brother once their carriage arrived. It was the first time she could do so, as the formality of the ceremony made it improper. Despite the unease that came with the awkwardness of my position, as I stayed near the carriage door that I had helped her down from, there was some satisfaction from the slight smile she tried to hide under the guise of mourning. I did want her to be happy, truly, but wanting and achieving were separate battles. I hoped that seeing her family again would give her some reprieve until we went back to Varlemont.

As Catherine pulled away from her brother, and turned to her father, he stared at me hard for only enough time for me to notice but no one else. If I had considered him a person of consequence, I might’ve been more unnerved, but I only returned his expression.

When the night wore down, I visited my mother in her salon. A bright fire warmed the room from the biting chill it had caught from standing empty most of the day. She stood near the fire, one hand resting on the mantle, her handkerchief in the other. The firelight reflected off the mirror before it, casting the room in an amber glow that showed the ceiling painted to look like the morning sky.

“I have something for you,” she said as she held out a round object in her hand. It was a golden pocket watch with a white enameled dial, and its case made of intricate repoussé of various animals among vines. I ran my thumb across the design, worn down and discolored through the decades. I had seen it more times than I could remember, but I had never held it before.

“Your father would’ve wanted you to have it,” she said, though I knew she was only saying it for my sake. I can’t imagine my father wanting me to have anything.

“I don’t want it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want anything of his,” I said, sharper than I intended.

“It was also your grandfather’s,” she said, “my father’s.”

I didn’t want to argue about it. I hesitated before I thanked her and put it inside my coat pocket, deciding it was just another on the list of things I inherited that I had neither want nor need for.

“You should prepare to go back to Varlemont tomorrow,” she said as she moved to rest in a yellow damask chair near the fire.

“I don’t want you to be alone,” I said, moving to a chair in front of hers.

“There are too many affairs to sort out.”

“And I can help you with them.”

“No, no,” she said as she leaned back, “you’re just a child. You need to be with your wife. You shouldn’t stress about such things.”

Unable to disobey her, we left for Varlemont the next day. The journey back was exhausting and largely silent. I focused on the landscape that passed by my window. I enjoyed seeing the farmlands and the clouds pass in the sky as my mind envisioned the future I would have. At times I looked over to Catherine, who preoccupied herself by reading some book, and I thought of what to say to her. But there was nothing to say.

I hadn’t prepared for the interim. The deafening silence of Varlemont at the end of it all. The few days I spent there went by in the slow usual routine, the nights slower, as my increasing restlessness forced me to pace my moonlit apartments until I tired myself.

I didn’t know how long I would’ve had to wait until things got better for me. I didn’t know how long it would take for my brother to receive a letter, once I got the courage to write to him or how long it would take for him to return, but despite my mother’s insistence to the contrary, I was still very much convinced of considering my brother a man of honor. Often I would stand at one of the high windows with a glass in hand, staring out onto the parterres, then dusted with snow, my nerves heightened and strained at the edge of my skin, and my heart aching to go home.

I considered the possibility of events not going my way, but the thought made me so sick I had to shake it out of my mind, and instead I reminded myself that patience is a virtue. How many years did I patiently bear it all? A few weeks or a few months was nothing. I had the time—time to convince my mother to stay in Varlemont, time to convince my brother to come back home, and time to become a happier and more satisfied version of myself. My father was gone. I was okay. Everything was okay. Time heals all wounds—or so they say. I only had to find the strength to bear it all in the meantime.