“Wh-what are you doing here?” Marthe stammered, then checked her rudeness. It would not do to anger Jeanne Roy, who held Élisabeth’s fate in her hands. “May I offer you a drink?”
“We have come to buy bread,” Jeanne Roy smiled. “This is a bakehouse, is it not?” There was a faint trace of imperiousness in her voice that Marthe did not like, but she did not show it. She bobbed her head.
“Of course, of course, you must have come from some distance.” Marthe glanced at the snowshoes. “Please sit and take some small beer with me.”
The women arranged themselves around Barbe Poulin’s table; Marthe was relieved that the widow had gone out on some errand she would not reveal. She poured spruce beer into pewter mugs and sat down.
“What brings you to town to buy your bread?” Marthe asked. She wasn’t sure if she could enquire after Élisabeth’s health in front of the native woman. She did not know how much the stranger knew about Jeanne’s magic.
“I am on my way to spend the winter with Wari at the mission village across the river at La Prairie,” Jeanne said, her eyes shining. “I will live in a longhouse with her and other Oneida and Agniers until the spring comes.”
Marthe blinked at the pair sitting opposite her. She could not imagine living among the natives in a longhouse—whatever a longhouse was—though a year ago she could not have imagined a native and a noblewoman sharing her table. Her heart lifted for the first time in weeks. This experience was a richness of a sort.
“Will your family mind Jeanne staying with you for so long?” Marthe asked Wari, thinking of the widow crusted onto the hull of her own home.
The Agnier woman did not move. “The small pox killed my family.”
“Oh.” Marthe’s face fell.
“My home is now with the other Haudenosaunee at the Jesuit mission. Others who have converted to your faith.” Wari folded her hands in her lap. She spoke French well, with a lilting accent. Marthe could not help staring at her.
“And why… why did you become a Christian?” She knew from Jeanne Roy’s sharp look that her question was impolite, but she could not contain her curiosity.
“Five years ago, French soldiers burned our villages and our crops.” Wari fixed her eyes on Marthe. “When peace came, so did the black robes. They spoke of safety in a place along the river. They said we could worship God freely there. I wanted a place where I could sell my herbs and be free to trade medicine with your people.” The Agnier woman nodded at Jeanne. “That’s why I became a Christian. For safety.”
An image of the governor’s bulging eye flashed into Marthe’s head. She put her fingertips on her throat and gently rubbed the skin where he had grabbed her. Wari was wrong to seek safety on this island.
“This is a town full of wolves,” Marthe said bitterly. “None of us is safe amongst these men.”
“You speak too rashly,” Wari replied. “There are good men and bad men, just as there are good and bad women. In all things, there is balance.”
Marthe paused, trying to find fault with the woman’s words. But in her heart she knew her husband was a good man, nothing like Lafredière or thecustomer who had struck his wife in the bakery for daring to want a finer loaf. Her father had been a good man too. Marthe pictured Papa, sitting down at the table with his children all around him, laughing as they spoke over each other to be the first to tell him all that had happened during the day. Her fingers slowly pinched the flesh on her neck as she thought about Papa slumped in the same chair where he ate his cheese and bread, his blood spilling over the rim of the small clay cup and onto the floor. A good man, gone too soon.
“Then I will pray for safety,” she whispered. “For my family as well as yours.”
The native woman nodded. “I will pray for you too, and for Angélique.”
“Your child must be kicking by now.” Jeanne Roy turned abruptly to Marthe, her tone brusque.
“Why, yes,” Marthe said, bewildered by the shift in the conversation. She did not know who Angélique was, and there was more she wanted to ask Wari. But she longed for the sorceress’s advice, and so she turned to Jeanne and shared her deepest fears. “I sometimes worry I will not survive my time in childbed.”
Jeanne nodded. “Every woman worries. I have helped girls in worse circumstances than you give birth to healthy children.”
Marthe’s ears perked up.
“You’re a midwife?” It made sense; most midwives had a bit of magic in them. Though they were almost always mothers or grandmothers themselves. “Do you have children of your own?” she asked.
“No.” Jeanne Roy’s tone was sharp. “I studied in Paris with one of the greatest accoucheurs in Europe.”
“Accoucheurs?” Marthe’s nose wrinkled.
“Man-midwives you might call them. It’s quite common now for well-born ladies to have one attend to them in their labours.”
Marthe rolled her eyes. “Aman-midwife? I expect they’d be just like Verger, talking about sows and piglets, nary a clue what it is to carry a pumpkin around inside for months.”
Jeanne Roy smiled. “It’s true. Most men don’t know a baby’s head from amelon. But the man-midwives are different; they are highly skilled. One of the best in France taught me all he knows.”
“Why would any woman want a man to assist her while she is labouring?” Marthe asked. “Is it not shameful for a man to see a woman in her confinement?”
