AUTUMN
16
It was the time of year when the fairies came out at night to paint the leaves in copper and gold, yet crabgrass still sprouted between the fat pumpkins. The October weeds were stubborn. The odd creeper had kept its hold throughout the summer and Élisabeth had to dig with some determination to root them out. She plunged her fork into the earth and gave one a twist, using her other hand to pull the fringed willow herb loose.
Her thoughts were not so easy to purge.
She had lost the witch. Jeanne Roy had disappeared into the forest and Élisabeth had missed her chance. She was cursed with no hope of a cure, possessed by an unholy spirit, as sure as she could tell. One by one the other brides were marrying and leaving the farmhouse, and soon she would be left with no choice but to do so too. She would have to marry a stranger. But would it last? She was a barren bride. She could not give a farmer his sons, a cabinetmaker his apprentice. How long before her husband sent her back to the nuns’ farm, shunned for not being able to do the only task God put her on earth to perform?
She would be sent into service again. It would be like it was at the Delaunay household: the hours long and uninteresting, the mistress demanding, the cook cranky. She had thought she would die of loneliness.
Until she’d met Rémy.
It was true that the cook had warned her to keep to her work and stay away from him.He’s a chip off the old block, that boy is. Élisabeth had not wanted to understand Old Geneviève’s meaning. From the start Rémy Delaunay had shown her a kindness that no one else in the household had.
“I knew your brother, you know,” he’d said one afternoon when she was washing up. He’d rolled the sleeves of his chemise to his elbow, revealing thick, dark hair on his forearms. For a moment she’d thought he meant to help her with the cooking pots, but he took a seat at the table instead. “I liked him very much. It’s a shame that God had to take him so young.”
She’d nodded and kept her eyes fixed on scraping burnt parsnips out of the bottom of a cast-iron pot. Everyone from Falaise to Flers had known Jean-Jacques; he had been Saint-Philbert’s favourite son. She told herself it was not remarkable that a well-to-do man such as Rémy had liked her brother, everyone had liked him. She’d put the kindness out of her mind and continued to scour the pot.
Still, that spark of sympathy had kindled something in her, and she began to look forward to the moments in the day when their paths would cross. At their first meeting after the burnt pot, Rémy had given her a cheery wave as she lugged water from the well. Another day he had winked when his mother had corrected Élisabeth on how to set the table. A whispered slight against the cook had made her laugh out loud, and for the first time since her brothers had died, Élisabeth thought it might not be impossible to be happy again. She related all of her encounters to Marthe in exacting detail when they saw each other at Mass on Sundays.
“He said Old Geneviève’s underarms shake like blancmange when she whips cream. Isn’t that funny? Now that he has said it, it is all I can think of when I watch her whisk.”
“Why would he say such a thing?” Marthe had frowned. “She’s been with his family since she was our age.”
Élisabeth had kept her eyes fixed on the altar and ignored Marthe. Her sister was too young to understand that it did not matter what Rémy said about the old cook, only that he had sought her out and shared his confidences with her. It was what had kept her alive in that cold farmhouse on the hill.
She shuddered, as if the cold were still upon her, and a clump of crabgrass broke off in her hand before she could loosen the root. She threw the stalk to one side. Perhaps it had been cruel to mock the old cook’s wobbly flesh, but that had not been her greatest sin.
Don’t be so wayward, girl.
She turned the nun’s words over, this way and that, examining what Sister Gagnon had meant, guessing at what she knew. She thought about the day she had walked with Rémy up to the clifftop to lay amid the heather.We are as good as married in God’s eyes already. She remembered the stem of yarrow on her ring finger, and how it had not lasted, how it had disintegrated with the washing of the cooking pots.
Wayward girl.
The nun’s words burned just as much as they had the day her own mother had seared her with that brand.
Élisabeth had been chasing after her younger brother and the game was getting rough, their faces streaked with dirt and tears from laughing and fighting. Her mother said good girls didn’t play in the dirt. Good girls sat by the hearth and helped their mothers with the mending. But Nicolas had thrown a stick and hit her shoulder, and that had started it. She’d sprinted after him. She was two years older and twice as strong and could easily catch him. When she did, she had a mind to pinch his cheek until he squealed.
She did not close the gate, as she knew she must, and the chickens ran free, scattering across the field.
At first she’d laughed to see them run, a poultry army in disarray. It did not matter if they ran loose. Even at the age of ten, her older brother, Jean-Jacques, could be relied upon to catch them one by one and put them back in theirhutch.My angel, Maman called him. Maman had no such words for Élisabeth now. The new baby she was carrying made her more disagreeable by the day, and she no longer stroked Élisabeth’s hair when she went to bed at night or whispered soft prayers in her ear. Nowadays Maman did nothing but complain that her back ached and her feet hurt, and she could never catch enough sleep.
Mind your sister.
Mind how you behave.
I am losing my mind with you, girl!
When Maman flung open the cottage door and screamed about the hens, Élisabeth knew she should hang her head and apologize. She knew she should have been minding Marthe, not chasing Nicolas. But why should the fault be hers, when it was Nicolas who had thrown the stick?
She screwed up her fists into tight balls. She shouted that her younger brother deserved to have his ears boxed, and her sister was a pest that no one wanted clutching at their skirts. Of course Marthe then wailed and stretched her arms out to be picked up, her usual ploy. Élisabeth was surprised to see Maman push Marthe away. Her mother slumped down on the doorstep, overcome. She looked at Élisabeth then, her words as heavy as stones.
Take more care, or the Devil will come for you, wayward girl.
The very next day the babies came—two of them, as it turned out—and took Maman with them to the grave. Élisabeth sat small in the corner when the neighbour’s wife said that it was over, and at least now Maman was in Heaven where she belonged. Marthe had wept like the baby she was, but Élisabeth had not looked up. She had kept her red-rimmed eyes on the mending in her lap.
“Lili?”
