“Maître Verger! The man who helped you just now.”
“Him? You can’t have known him for more than a quarter of an hour.” Élisabeth crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s absurd.”
“I’ve known him forhalfan hour,” Marthe retorted. “And he’s already a master baker, with his own shop.”
“Master baker, what nonsense! He’s no older than I am.”
“He’ll be twenty next month.”
Élisabeth threw her hands in the air. “He’s lying to you, Marthe, he can’t beanything more than a journeyman. He cannot own his own shop.Bestbakery, what a boast. It is likely theonlybakery.”
“The baker he was apprenticed to has died, and so the business has fallen to him. I like the look of it—and him, I suppose—so if you are going back to Saint-Philbert to marry your devoted Rémy, it will be without me.”
Marthe turned and ran towards the nuns’ farmhouse. Heavy drops of rain fell on her face as the storm finally shed its tears of frustration. Damn Élisabeth, with her lies and her lovesickness. Her false piety. Marthe would tie herself to this island with a marriage knot so tight that her sister could never undo it.
She ran faster, her skirts flapping, plunging headlong into her fate.
11
Once, when Élisabeth was a girl, a fox made off with three of the Jossards’ chickens in a single night. Like every family in Saint-Philbert, they had kept a coop beside their vegetable garden for a ready supply of eggs. Marthe’s temper often reminded Élisabeth of the squawks of the birds as they died: outraged fluster followed by a crunch of bones, and then silence. As Marthe’s foul mood set in, Élisabeth wondered if she wouldn’t be clearing up blood and scattered feathers until long after the wedding.
A fortnight after she had attacked the men in the alley, Élisabeth tried once again to make amends by offering to dress her sister’s hair for the ceremony. The girls were in the dormitory, burbling with nerves. Marthe sniffed and declined Élisabeth’s offer without a glance, saying that Rose was up to the task and she wouldn’t bend her ear with fantasies about returning to France while working her plaits.
“I promise I won’t speak of it,” Élisabeth said. “But please slow down. Even if we can’t go home, you have only just met Verger. Take some time to consider your choices.”
“You know what the intendant said.” Marthe leaned her head to the rightto allow Rose to pin up her braids. “Everyone is to be married by the first of September.”
“Yes, but Sister Gagnon says that won’t stick. The law can’t rule man’s heart.”
“My marriage has nothing to do with my heart. As such, it hardly matters which stranger I wed. Remember that our purpose in coming to New France was tomarry. At least mine was, though you appear to have come halfway across the world on a fool’s errand.”
Marthe cried out and grabbed her head. Rose blushed and removed the pin from Marthe’s scalp. “Sorry,” Rose said, sending a sympathetic glance in Élisabeth’s direction as well.
No matter how much Élisabeth tried to sweep the feathers from the floor, Marthe would not listen to her pleas.
As she made her way along the dirt path from the congregation to the little chapel in Ville-Marie, a familiar sensation churned Élisabeth’s stomach. She knew it well by now. It had been with her from the moment she had lost her child all those months ago, the night of the Winter Witch’s curse. She clung to Marthe’s words—that she was nothing like the touring demoniac, barking mad for all the village to see—but the thought of the woman’s public exorcism made her doubt. Marthe’s description of the strange twists and thrusts of the woman’s limbs mirrored what she felt inside her own body. She had to be possessed like the nuns of Louviers, for what else could it be? With growing dread, she imagined the horror on theSaint-Jean-Baptistegirls’ faces as a demon hatched from inside her, unfurling sticky, leathery wings like a newborn foal from a mare’s womb. She imagined the brides’ screams as the demon soared high, high above the farmhouse, sloughing off Élisabeth’s snakeskin body and letting it fall back to earth.
She saw Father de Sancy’s watery eyes fixed on her, whip in hand, as he demanded to know if she were addicted to the carnal act.
She clasped her hands tightly together and did three rounds of the squeeze and prayer.
When they arrived in the village, the people of Ville-Marie were milling around outside the chapel, waiting for a glimpse of the first of the new brides to be married. There was a handful of women with grey aprons and mended brown skirts, and five times as many men in the same drab colours. Their doublets hung loose and their stockings wilted round their ankles, such was the heat. When the governor swept through in red and blue silk the contrast was so vibrant he looked like a peacock strolling through a flock of sparrows.
“Stay here,” he commanded a pair of native children who trailed after him. The younger girl had a missing tooth; she could not have been more than seven or eight years old. She looked bewildered as the older child put out a hand to stop her advance.
“Are those the governor’s… children?” Marthe looked flushed. Élisabeth wondered if it was the heat, or the beginnings of regret.
“Of course not,” Sister Gagnon tutted. “Those are his Panis slaves.”
The governor turned and tipped his hat to Marthe, a smile spreading across his face. Marthe faltered. Élisabeth stepped forward to catch her but when Marthe saw her outstretched arms, her face hardened. She turned away, taking Rose and Lou by the hands.
“I must not leave Maître Verger waiting.”
Her friends kissed her cheeks, wishing her luck and a dozen sons and reminding her she’d never know a day’s hunger by marrying a baker. Élisabeth faded back into the crowd, wincing as if she’d been stung. There was no way to clean up this fit of temper, this mess of feather and bone. Marthe would not bend.
Élisabeth dawdled outside, hanging back by the tree in the Hôtel Dieu yard. The air was muggy, and her chemise stuck to her chest. She watched the native children use a stick to draw a pattern in the dust. She wondered what they were saying to each other, and who the Panis were, and how two of their children had ended up slaves while other natives walked freely down the streets of Ville-Marie. There was so much she did not understand about New France.
Presently a pair of women came up the path, walking slowly and talking as old friends do, not waiting for the other to finish before the next words were spoken. One was a native woman, a woven basket of herbs on her back. Élisabeth gaped when she realized that the other was Jeanne Roy. She stepped behind the tree so as not to be seen.
