“I learned all I know from some of the greatest men of our age,” Jeanne Roy said, the sin of pride heavy on her tongue. The pair stopped by the slave children. Élisabeth saw Jeanne Roy’s companion take an apple out of a beaded bag and offer it to the little girls. The children skipped up and down as they took turns biting into the red fruit.
The native woman looked at Jeanne Roy. “I learned all I know at my grandmother’s knee.”
The witch paused, considering this. Finally, she nodded her head. “I do not doubt that you had the better education.”
The native woman smiled. “Then I will share with you the knowledge of the Haudenosaunee.”
Élisabeth peeked her head around the tree. She saw the stranger take a bundle of herbs from her bag and press them into Jeanne Roy’s hand. Maybe they werebothwitches? With a start, Élisabeth realized this was the moment to ask Jeanne Roy for help. She would fall to her knees in the hospital courtyard and beg her to lift the curse. Élisabeth stepped out from behind the tree, just as Jeanne Roy spoke again.
“I have nothing so valuable to share in return. Nothing except the story of how I came to be here. I have never told a soul, but it is a lesson I would gladly teach you, should it one day spare you my pain.”
“Élisabeth Jossard!” Sister Gagnon’s voice rang out from the chapel door. “Hurry, or you will miss your sister’s wedding.”
The witch turned and saw Élisabeth by the tree, eavesdropping on her confession. Her face turned red with fury.
“I’m coming,” Élisabeth called back. She thrust her hand in her pocketand clutched her rosary, slinking past the two women towards the chapel. She wondered what tale Jeanne Roy would tell the native woman about her journey. Would she describe how she had used magic to convince the king to set her coven free? How she had cast a glamour on him from far away? Howdida convicted witch evade the pyre?
All she knew was that she had ruined her chance to speak to Jeanne Roy and she did not know if she would get another.
Élisabeth felt a shiver up her spine and wondered if the witch were casting the evil eye on her, even now.
12
The first thing that surprised Marthe about being married was that she was expected to share her house with another woman.
The whitewashed wooden building was much like all the others in Ville-Marie. It had a shingle outside announcing the wares within—in the case of her husband’s home, bread—a hearth in the middle of the room, and a sloping roof. What was unusual about the baker’s house was the thin wall that ran from the back of the house to the front, stopping awkwardly a few paces from the front door. Upon entering the bakehouse customers could see two separate apartments at once. On the left was the room where Maître Verger worked, surrounded by sacks of flour. A hessian sheet pinned to the ceiling obscured a small area at the back of the room where the couple ate, slept, and dressed. But on the right, patrons could see a more comfortable space with a small table and chairs, and two cabinets displaying baskets of bread. A larger sleeping space was carved off from this room, and it was here that the old baker’s widow still lived.
“Call me Maman Poulin,” she said when Marthe returned from the chapel and walked across the threshold of her new home. “I’ve lived in this village long enough to have everyone call me mother.”
“She’s Old Poulin’s widow, Barbe,” her husband said. “I call her Maman too.”
Marthe could hardly remember who Old Poulin was, let alone why his widow was living in her new home, bustling about her shop. Maman Poulin had a portly frame, a sign of many years as a baker’s wife, and flecks of silver in her brown hair.
“I told you,” Verger said amiably. “Poulin was the baker I was apprenticed to. He died last winter, and Maman has stayed on ever since.”
“It was an abscessed tooth that did him in. My poor old bear.” Maman Poulin crossed herself and looked up to Heaven. Marthe saw the skin around the widow’s neck was loose, though her mouth was set in a firm line.
“By all rights the tooth should have been buried with him, but after the barber pulled it out—in the hopes the infection would not take—he gave it me and I put it in my pocket. It was only after the dirt had hit the lid of his coffin that I remembered the blessed thing. And what was I to do with it then? I could hardly dig up Old Poulin’s grave to reunite him with the instrument of his death! So I’ve kept it in my pocket ever since.” The widow rummaged in her apron and pulled out the blood-encrusted molar to show Marthe. “I sometimes pray on it, so that the Blessed Virgin might save me from toothache and the Iroquois and all the other things that bring agony to a settler’s life.”
“I am p-pleased to meet you,” she stammered, aghast at the tooth in the widow’s hand. But she was less than pleased when she learned that she and Verger would sleep in the corner of the workroom on the same straw mattress he had used since he was an apprentice, while Barbe Poulin would not budge from the cattail bed where her husband had died.
“You would not like it, ma chère, it may be softer than straw, but it would curse your marriage to sleep where another man has not long breathed his last. You two will rest easier where you are. If I remarry, you can claim my bed and take down the wall between our two halves of the house.”
“Ifyou remarry?” The words caught in Marthe’s throat.
“I cannot betooquick about it! How would that look? God would frown upon me, and women would bang pots outside my window and subject me to the full charivari!”
“Of course.” Marthe blushed. She didn’t want a charivari of villagers screeching and hollering outside of the house at night either. She’d had enough of being tainted by another’s sin in Saint-Philbert.
“The best remedy for gossip is to not let the idle tongues begin wagging. Once they start, they rarely stop. I should not want any to take against you, Marthe, so tomorrow we shall put our best foot forward and introduce you to everyone in town.”
“Why should anyone take against me?” Marthe asked, but the widow appeared not to have heard.
The next day the widow tucked Marthe’s arm under hers and walked her up Rue Saint-Pierre to Rue Saint-Jacques and along the northern edge of the village. Marthe could only absorb half of what Maman Poulin said: Here was the best butcher, though Marthe must take care when ordering, for he frequently scrimped on the fat; here was the clog maker whose shoes were fine, though Marthe should not even think of ordering a pair until they had counted all their sols at the end of the year, for they cost half a livre and the man would not haggle; here were the new merchants’ stores, though Maman Poulin insisted they only shop at Le Moyne’s, for Madame Le Moyne had been a good friend to Old Poulin and that sort of loyalty always comes back round again. Marthe’s head spun from all the widow’s instructions.
They passed the inn at the corner of Saint-Lambert where Maman Poulin said many of the soldiers had been billeted before the regiment was disbanded, and was still a cut above Folleville’s tavern, although Folleville’s was certainly the more popular establishment for soldiers, fur traders, and artisans to drink—anddo more besides. She sucked her teeth at that, and while Marthe did not entirely understand her meaning, she did not think it could be such a bad place, for they walked down Rue Saint-Charles and into Folleville’s themselves.
“I am friendly with the owner. You too would do well to stay on Anne Lamarque de Folleville’s good side,” the widow advised her. “Her weekly bread order is enough to keep our bakery in business.”
