Marthe bent down, picking up a sheet of paper. “Honestly, Lili, how can you be so careless? You’ve dropped your letter.”
Élisabeth looked at the certificate of good conduct in Marthe’s hand. “How…?” Her mind raced. The woman in velvet was in possession of her letter, was she not? Or had Élisabeth imagined it? She whipped round.
The woman with the stained velvet dress was nowhere to be seen.
She had simply faded into the darkness.
2
Marthe scanned the gloomy corners of the lower deck while the old priest finished his questions. The other girls stared at them from their bunks, whispering among themselves. Marthe smoothed the edges of her cap and fixed her gaze ahead. This was one more trial her sister had forced her to suffer. One more trial she could not forgive.
“Come, Father, dine with me,” the captain said, reappearing from the stairwell. He nodded at his lamp-bearing crew as if to move the inquisition along. “My men are anxious to be underway.” He bowed slightly at the waist, indicating his deference. “You may continue your enquiries later in our journey, if necessary, once we are safely on course.”
Father de Sancy rubbed his bare pate. He seemed dismayed not to have discovered a witch among the Norman girls. The forlorn look lasted a moment, before his mouth hardened. He gave the brides one more frown before allowing himself to be led away.
At once the girls melted. Some fell back into their bunks in a stunned silence, others proclaimed their godliness and piety for all to hear. Élisabeth rubbed her hands together as if she were lathering a cake of soap.
“I don’t know how that woman… how she…”
“Quit your fidgeting,” Marthe snapped. She could feel the eyes of the other girls upon them still.
“She did not have a certificate. Did you see? She stole my letter of good conduct, I’m certain of it.”
“You hardly merited that letter, Lili. Perhaps it’s for the best it landed in the hands of someone whose conduct trulyisgood.”
Marthe regretted what she said the moment the barb left her lips. She turned away from her sister’s falling face and made herself busy with her own letter, taking it out of her pocket and running her finger along the paper’s folds. But who in her position would not be tempted to be sharp, on occasion? It was her sister’s fault they were on this ship. Élisabeth’s disgrace meant that no one in Saint-Philbert would marry them. And after the barber-surgeon had failed to cure Papa, after their darling father was gone, they were not allowed to stay on their meagre farm. They had been drifting around the cottage like ghosts, haunting their old lives, when foolish Father Paul had come to them with his solution. He said the archbishop was looking for young women who would take up the king’s offer of a dowry in exchange for marrying settlers in New France. The village curé then offered to pay for their coach to the coast and sign the required certificates of good conduct if they left by month’s end.
Marthe had not wanted to go. She knew from Father Paul’s reading of the Jesuit tales the terrors that might befall them: how if captured, Iroquois warriors would chew their fingers to the bone and eat their still-beating hearts. It was madness to agree to such a journey. Marthe had slammed doors and shouted they were not eligible, that Élisabeth’s letter was a forgery. She swore that the priest was lying to God, just to be rid of them, the disgraced Jossard sisters. Why else would he swear to Élisabeth’s piety and virginity?
Her sister had held up her rosary and said she was as devout as they came.
“Piety is not the part of the letter that interests anyone,” Marthe had said, her lip curling. The reddening of Élisabeth’s cheeks had confirmed that her sister knew it to be true as well.
Marthe now put her letter back in her pocket. She groped her way back to the bunk in the gloom, Élisabeth trailing behind. They crawled into their wooden casket and sat side by side, each waiting for the other to speak.
“How long do you think we’ll be stuck on this ship?” Marthe said finally.
Before her sister could answer, a voice in the darkness replied, “About two months. Maybe less. Maybe more. It will depend on the wind.”
Marthe peered out of their wooden cave. She was surprised anyone would speak to them after the priest’s scrutiny. The unexpected inquisition could not have helped their standing, yet here was one of the Parisians they had followed on board, hanging upside down from the top bunk, talking to them.
“You from Normandy?” the voice asked. It was the tall girl with crooked teeth they had seen on the quayside. Her cap clung to her head only by the strings at the nape of her neck.
“Yes,” Marthe replied. “We are. We’re from Saint-Philbert-sur-Orne, half a day’s coach ride south of Caen.” Until that week, Marthe would not have been able to say how far her village was from the city of Caen. She sat up taller, ready to impart more of her newfound knowledge to these Parisians.
“I could tell from how you talk. It’s not as odd as some people say. I can understand you just fine.”
Another head suddenly appeared over the side of the bunk. The girl’s cheeks were full and her eyes bright. “I’m sorry. Lou doesn’t mean to be rude. We like the Norman dialect. It’s like… it’s like drinking cider instead of wine.”
“Are you sisters?” Marthe asked, sticking her head into the space between the bunks.
“Near enough,” the tall one said.
“Lou was orphaned when she was five, me at seven,” her friend explained. “We well-nigh raised each other. We’re all from the Salpêtrière—me and Lou, those two on that bunk there, and some others I can’t see in this light. I expect you are orphans as well?”
Marthe felt a tug on her heart at the memory of Papa.
“Yes, we are now. Though our mother died when I was four. Lili well-nigh raised me.” Marthe clambered out of the bunk and stood so that she was face-to-face with the other girls. “I’m Marthe Jossard. That’s my sister, Élisabeth. Lili. What are your names?”
