She carefully elbowed aside the silk and satin, then rummaged in the trunk, searching for something useful. Marguerite was glad that she had no looking glass to reflect her darkened face and chapped lips – glad that she could not see in her own eyes the despair she saw in Michel’s and Damienne’s.
The cave was silent, save for the sounds of her own rustling. Even in the long nights when they huddled in the cave together, there were only the sounds of the fire’s crackle and hiss, the dull clunk of wood stacked upon wood, the crack and pop of Damienne’s joints. Michel no longer played his citre. It crouched beneath a stone ledge like a shunned child.
From the day of their abandonment, they had avoided speaking of hopes and plans for their lives in New France, but they had asked each other for songs and ballads and amusing stories about their friends and their childhoods. Damienne had rattled on endlessly about the merits of her long-dead husband, and in an intimate moment, told Marguerite about a stillborn son. They occasionally discussed religion and politics and wondered aloud about life at court. But now, weeks later, they had ceased to speak altogether, as if confinement had made them too familiar. They grunted and pointed, mumbled only to themselves.
Marguerite continued, however, to talk to God. I will love thee, O Lord, she prayed, my strength… Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak…O save me for thy mercy’s sake.
All of them stank of sweat and grime and blood. What use to dip white linen collars and cuffs in water and beat them against rocks when they had no soap? What use to wash anything, even their own hands and faces?
They’d also begun to carry the stink of fear. The cave hoarded their stench as if it were a thing to be savoured.
During long hungry nights, Marguerite could think only of food: bread, cheese, roasted pig, apples, honeyed hazelnuts, wine. Scarcely able to believe it now, she recalled evenings when she’d been so full she’d turned away from the table and proffered chunks of roasted pig, dripping with fat, to the king’s hounds.
Marguerite reached for an ivory box in the corner of the trunk, slid open the cover. Needles. Could she somehow fashion usable clothing from rabbit skins? They’d begun to save them, though she was afraid to consider what that might mean. Were they now reconciled? She shook her head to dismiss the thought. She would not think ahead, would not imagine a winter on the island. It was only the beginning of September. Her uncle would come soon.
In the corner of the trunk, her fingers found a stack of clean muslin rags. How long since she’d needed them? She sat back on her heels and counted the white lines on the dark wall: fifty-two days they had been on the island, and it had been at least several weeks before that.
Marguerite laid her hands on her flat belly.Non, it could not be.
I hear an infant’s wails. I run toward the sound. But now the cries are behind me. I spin around and run the other way. The wails become whimpers, coming from high in the trees. Then there is only silence and the sound of my own breathing as I suck air deep into my chest. I slump to the cold ground and wait for my breathing to quiet.
If the baby were mine, I would weep. But she was Marguerite’s.
I chew on bread and cheese, the bread so tough and dry it pulls at my teeth. When I came back to the garret, I was oddly pleased to find the bone, with its scrap of meat, gone. I decided, quite suddenly, to be wildly wasteful. The decision made me tremble with the eagerness of a young girl. I put a small piece of cheese just outside the window. Around it I scattered a fine dust of ashes, the ash slipping through my fingertips like grey silk. I want to know that it is the yellow-striped cat, and not rats, who is benefiting from my small gifts of food. Has she ceased to fear me?
Fear. In all its guises: worry, terror, despair. Those humours filling the bowels so there is room for nothing else. So quickly did Michel succumb to melancholy and anger, and the soot-black humour of fear.
The evening when Marguerite finally told Michel they had all shared one roasted gull, the meat tough and stringy and tasting of fish. They had also eaten a few mussels and whelks Marguerite had gathered, her skirts bunched up around her waist, the icy water stinging her feet and calves and making her hands ache. Damienne had retired to the cave to give the young couple some privacy by the fire near the harbour, but there were no tender caresses, no loving words.
Marguerite steadied her voice, trying to disguise her own fear. I have counted as best I can, she said. Early April.
Michel bowed his head. None of us will live to see April, he muttered to the bones and shells at his feet.
Non, she said. You will see. A ship will come. I will give birth to our child at Charlesbourg Royal in the company of other colonists, in the company of women who know of such things.
Michel tugged his fingers through his matted beard and barked a harsh laugh. When he looked up at Marguerite, his smirk was cruel. Perhaps, he said, you will have the good fortune to lose the child. Early.
With a sharp intake of breath, Marguerite spun away from him, but too late. She had already seen. Despair had snuffed out his love for her, leaving behind only a faint trail of grey smoke and dark ash.
She turned toward the broad expanse of unforgiving sea and searched amongst the cold waves for a psalm to comfort her. She recited the words almost silently so that Michel would not hear her and mock.
Hear, O Lord, my prayer, she murmured, and let my cry come to thee. Turn not away thy face from me. In the day when I am in trouble, incline thy ear to me…For my days are vanished like smoke, and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire.
Turn not away from me. Vanished like smoke. Fuel for the fire. Km-mm-mm.
Shivering, I decide to kindle a fire. It is the sabbath, and I do not have to go downstairs to teach the girls. I do not have to meet with the Franciscan. At dusk, I will walk the woods and fields outside Nontron, but I will stay away from the river. I do not want to hear the sound of water. Ever. I will listen, instead, for the beat of black wings, the raucous croaks and softer km-mm-mms that tell me they are there, keeping watch.
Isabelle blows small bursts of air through pursed lips. She scrinches her eyes as she tries to pass yarn through the eye of a blunt needle. Frustrated, she lays the needle down beside the stocking she is darning. The stocking is lumpy with tangles and knots, and her fingertips are red.
She slides off her bench and walks toward me, takes a pinch of my skirt and tugs. “Madame de Roberval,” she says, “why do we never sing? I would like to sing.”
I think of Marguerite’s gentle voice rising and falling in prayers and psalms, of Michel singing romantic ballads,les chansons d’amour.
“And dance,” she says excitedly, grabbing my hand. “Papa says you were often at court. You must know how to dance.”
“Your father is mistaken. I was never at court.” I try not to imagine the other lies he is telling this child.
“But Papa–”
“Non,” I say, pulling my hand from hers. “Go back to your darning.”
“But could we sing?” she persists, her lisp more pronounced.Could we thing?
“If you wish to thing, you must do so at home. Your papa can teach you. He seems to know everything.”
Isabelle does not hear the acid in my voice. She looks toward the ceiling and sighs. “He never sings. He’s always reading.”
Her beautiful lips pout, and I think of Michel’s lips, his gay voice, and the music of the citre. When I was taken from the island, the ship’s captain took the instrument in exchange for my passage, but even then was reluctant to take me aboard. He could not be convinced I was human. It was only his greed for the citre, with its precious metals and inlaid ivory, that saved me – or condemned me.
Isabelle has returned to her bench. She pushes dark curls away from her face, steals a sidelong glance at me, and then reaches for a chunk of chalk and a roof-slate instead of her yarn and stocking. I leave her alone. I have scolded enough.
Turning away, I allow myself a small smile. This morning the cheese was gon
e. When I opened the window upstairs, a gust of wind blew ashes into my face, and I tasted grit on my tongue, but not before I saw tracks on the ledge: four rounded toes and a pad, a cat’s paws, not a rat’s.
What does Monsieur Lafrenière think he knows? What does he want to know? I walk to the narrow window and crack it open so I can breathe.
How long, O Lord? How long? Days vanished like smoke. Grievous sin. La culpabilité.
Memories explode within my skull. My head aches from the reverberations. Hands to my forehead, I stare out on the muddy road. And now I am floating, outside, above the mud, and looking back at the scrivener’s shop. I see through the walls, to the girls inside the classroom, heads bent over their darning. All except Isabelle. She works at the slate, the chalk tapping, grating, scraping.
Lines on the granite wall. Scrape of stone upon stone.
Before she knew how to make sinew, Marguerite used twine to sew rabbit skins together. When Michel saw her using his dagger to poke holes in the stiff skins, he carved a bone awl. Without a word, he tossed it into her lap. She had learned when she was a child how to preserve the skins of sheep and rabbits, but the furs she had now – some entirely white, others still tawny but mottled with white – had not been properly tanned. She did not have the tools to work them, to stretch and soften them, and the skins were stiff and her sewing clumsy, but they made a warm cloak. Marguerite also fashioned hoods and crude mitts, and tried not to worry that the rabbits were becoming harder and harder to catch.
Now and again Michel snared a fox or weasel or mink, its fur thick and lustrous, but he refused to wear anything made from the animals’ skins.
We are not les sauvages, he said, his face bitter. Not yet.
The ducks and gulls were becoming as scarce as the rabbits. Michel baited hooks with bits of their entrails to catch fish from the sea and from the lower pools and streams. He carved a spear that he and Marguerite used to stab flatfish in the shallows and a few salmon in the cold brooks. Damienne, who refused to put a foot in the water, any water, because of her terrible fear of drowning and of monsters, gathered whatever berries and roots she could find without venturing too far from the cave. All three of them were growing thin, even the corpulent Damienne. Their ragged clothes hung loose from their shoulders.
Marguerite’s belly had barely begun to round when she finally told the old woman. Damienne’s hands fluttered about her gaunt face. She pretended gladness – and a knowledge of birthing she did not have. She struggled to make herself smile, then she fussed and fretted over Marguerite as if this were a joyous event. She chirped and chattered, suggesting that they begin making blankets and bunting from rabbit skins.
Marguerite willed her to be silent. She could not think about the baby. She could think only of how she had lost Michel’s love. Her body craved food, but even more the comfort of his touch. She could only dimly recall his dazzling smile, and her ears hungered for the sound of his voice, light and gay and confident once again. At night, when they lay side by side on flat pink stone, feet toward the fire, they could have fed their love. Instead she starved for the feel of his mouth on hers, for the embrace of his arms and the warmth of his body pressed against her.
Michel left her empty and ravenous.
She felt betrayed by her body, and then ashamed. Once, not so long ago, though it now seemed like years, she had wanted this baby. She had thought that her uncle would marry them if she were carrying Michel’s child. How foolish she had been.
Marguerite prayed for God’s mercy. She prayed for their rescue, and she prayed that Michel’s love would return when the ship finally came.
She prayed that he would not scorn her forever.
Continuously, without pause, her lips murmured prayers: Have mercy on me, O Lord…My God is my helper, and in him will I put my trust…They wandered in a wilderness in a place without water. They found not the way of a city for their habitation. They were hungry and thirsty. Their soul fainted in them. And they cried to the Lord in their tribulation, and he delivered them out of their distresses…
How long, O Lord? How long? Whispers. Growls. Taunts.Out of the depths I have cried to thee. Km-mm-mm. Saved by our grace, not God’s.
I am back in the classroom. I hear giggling behind me, the girls this time, not the voices, but when I turn from the window, they concentrate on their needles and stockings, their faces solemn. The tip of Isabelle’s pink tongue covers her upper lip, and she works quietly with the chalk. She does not raise her head, afraid that I will make her pick up her wool and needle.
I turn back to the window. The air is balmy, but I see snow falling and feel sleet and icy pellets strike my face, freezing my eyes.
The days grew short and bitter cold, the winds more fierce, driving ice onto the shore. The ice became so thick they could have walked to nearby islands, but they had neither reason nor will nor energy to do so. Marguerite and Damienne hauled water and driftwood to the cave. They cut spindly dry trees and gathered all the frozen berries they could find, no longer caring that the berries might be poisonous.
Michel left the cave only to check and re-set the snares. He said little, and even then Marguerite and Damienne did not welcome his words, for he could only curse Roberval and mutter about cold, hunger, death, and murder. The weight of his bitterness was worse than the thick smoke-laden air.
Marguerite tried to answer his gruffness with tenderness, but he brushed aside her hands, and her words. They still lay side by side at night, but he denied her even the warmth of his body lying close to hers.
Damienne, her face now deeply lined, her grey hair thin, and her skin dark and scaly, no longer troubled herself to give the lovers privacy. There was no need.
One day, outside the cave, she pulled Marguerite aside. You cannot keep thinking of him, she said, not even willing to speak Michel’s name. You must think of the baby, and you must not be so sad. Your sadness will hurt the baby.
The baby. Michel would not speak of the baby. Michel did not want the baby. Marguerite tried to convince herself that she did, that the baby was a gift from God, a blessing. She continued to read her New Testament and to pray: Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak…From my mother’s womb thou art my God. Depart not from me. For tribulation is very near, and there is none to help me.
Marguerite prayed and she fretted, for she had begun to see the sense of what Michel had said: it would be fortunate to lose the baby, as early as possible. It would be a sin to pray, or even to wish, for such a fate, an even greater sin to act to bring it about. Yet Marguerite, as if dwelling in a body not entirely her own and driven by a will outside of her soul, watched her hands gather roots, seeds, and dried leaves from every plant she could find. She ground and chopped as best she could, then boiled her concoctions in the black pot. Hands shaking, she would bring the dark brews to her lips. There was no sugar or honey to make the draughts less bitter.
Nor should they be less bitter, she thought. It was only right and good that they should make her retch and bring a griping to her bowels.
Pretending that she had been only searching for and preparing food, she offered the foul-tasting mixtures to Michel and Damienne. Michel answered with a low grumble, Damienne with a disapproving scowl, and Marguerite worried that God would know her real intention, her wickedness.
She would drop to her knees then and pray for forgiveness: O Lord, rebuke me not in thy indignation, nor chastise me in thy wrath. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak.
Mercy upon me, O Lord. Weak, weak, weak. Kmmm-mm.
Marguerite would not compound her sin by holding God accountable.
But I will.
I clasp my hands together to keep them from reaching out and sweeping the lamp to the floor. I would hear it crash and see it shatter. I would use a shard to slice my wrist. Blood. There should be blood.
Was it not a sin for God to have visited such a fate upon her? In the face of her faith, her love and petitions, was it not a sin for him to remain silent?
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Out of the depths I have cried to thee…How long, O Lord? How long? Saved by our grace, not God’s. Km-mm-mm.
Isabelle looks up from her slate to my tightly folded hands. Her tongue darts over her half-teeth, the ivory squares just coming in. “Madame de Roberval.” Her words are soft and hesitant. “Papa says you lived on an island with wolves and bears…and demons.”
“Non.”
“Papa is wrong?” Her small chin juts out, a challenge.
“Your father is correct in most things,” I say carefully. “In this he has simply mistaken me for someone else.”
“But he has books,” she says with authority. “He reads about wild places. And demons. He says that you were on the Isle of Demons.”
“Non, that was not me.”
Isabelle beckons me closer, cups her small hands around her mouth, and lisps into my ear. “Papa says it was Monsieur de Roberval who was the demon.”
I draw back. How does Lafrenière know these stories?
Isabelle draws a small finger across her throat, an imaginary slice. “Papa says it is good that someone killed him. In Paris.” She tilts her head, coy now. “I’ve never been to Paris. Have you?”
“Your papa has mistaken me for someone else,” I repeat, my heart beating so hard I fear she will hear it.
“Papa is smart,” she retorts. “He reads books about alchemy and geography. He says the king’s cosmographer is a fool.”
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