Despite the Angels - By Madeline A Stringer Page 0,56

will be happier if they hear each other, including Luc and your father.”

Eloise opened her eyes and looked around, puzzled. Then she saw Daniel holding out his hand to her and heard the music starting up. She jumped to her feet and under the shade of the big trees the dancing started. Eloise found her feet moving with the music and she threw herself into the dance, enjoying the turning and circling of it, catching the hands that were held out to her, letting go, weaving the pattern to and fro. She began to smile and then to grin and by the time the circle had moved her round to Daniel again, she was laughing aloud. Daniel matched his steps to hers and moved her out of the group into the sunshine. They danced circles around each other, slow and stately, in rhythm to the music. They locked eyes and laughed again, not knowing why they were suddenly so happy, but not caring.

They were brought back to the present by Madame, calling them back into the shade, back to the proper behaviour of the gentry.

At the salt marshes, Nicholas was scraping the thin layer of salt to the side of the section and his cousin Jean-Marc was lifting the little pile into a small sack. They were sweating in the afternoon heat.

“This is slow work,” Jean-Marc said, as he wiped his streaming face again, “it would be quicker just to sweat into the bag and squeeze it out. And it would be pure white salt off us, not this cowardly stuff. What makes it that colour anyway? Who ever heard of yellow salt!”

“It is the way it is here. I suppose it must be because the silt underneath it is yellow.” Nicholas stretched across to gather the last thin scraping of crystals, being careful not to gather the mud underneath. “We get less for it than if it was white, of course. The cheese makers over in Cantal like it, their cheese is yellow anyway. But it is hard to sell privately, you know what I mean?” Nicholas winked at his cousin, “though I do keep a bit the nuns never know about.”

“The nuns sell to the cheesemakers for you, then?”

“Yes, and take half of the money. And the taxes are terrible. That is why I keep some back.”

“It is the only way the common man can survive. It is the same in Nantes. Maybe when the summer is over and things calm down, I can find you a market there. Can you get the colour out of the salt?”

“I don’t know. I never thought of it.”

“That is why we are poor. We just accept. We must stop behaving like sheep, we must take control like the Parisians. We must insist on better conditions.”

“They tried that in Bordeaux once, I heard. There were riots about the price of bread, but nothing changed. Look at the price now.”

“But if you never complain, nothing will change, that is for sure. The rich are not going to wake up one morning and decide to give away their money, are they? So go and ask your landlord – I challenge you! Don’t be lily-livered like your salt.”

Nicholas looked out towards the estuary, hidden from them by the dykes and saw the thin stream of water beginning to make its way towards them.

“Quick, get that salt off the ground, they have opened the sluices.” The two men worked quickly to save the last of the salt and pulled the bags up onto the higher ground between the salt pans just as the first of the high tide snaked over the low barrier and covered the silt again. Nicholas ran around to close the little gate that would hold today’s sea water on his patch of marsh.

“It is so hot, we might be able to be back here in two days for the next lot. The summer is good, more chance to salt away a little of our own, huh?”

Jean-Marc laughed. “Not a good reason not to put in for a share of the seigneur’s. Get him when he is feeling richer, too!” He flung an arm round Nicholas and patted his shoulder boisterously.

Chapter 21.

It was a bright evening a week later and Eloise was sitting at her dressing table, getting ready for dinner. Marie-Claire was fed and sleeping, under the watchful eye of Eloise’s youngest sister, recently hired as a maid to help her with the baby. So Eloise was free to sit and think,