“Maman Poulin, we are obliged to journey to my home this morning,” Élisabeth said suddenly. “I’ve had word from a person who walked by the house that a shutter has come loose.”
“Oh no,” Barbe Poulin said, her concern knit across her forehead. “You mustn’t let a loose shutter flap in the wind. It could damage the frame.”
“Precisely,” Élisabeth said. “So we have decided to make a day of it, Marthe and I, along with some of our sisters from the ship. We will be back before nightfall.”
Marthe marvelled at Élisabeth’s smooth lie. Though what Barbe Poulin said next made her heart sink.
“What an idea! I shall join you.”
29
They collected the otherSaint-Jean-Baptistegirls from the clog maker’s shop and walked along the river path on the edge of the forest. The day before, a dreary sleet had fallen unlike any Élisabeth had ever known in Normandy, a cold rain that had frozen when it hit the ground, lacquering the house and trees with a glaze of hard ice. The landscape looked like it had been coated in whipped egg whites. Élisabeth wished she had brought the snowshoes her husband had purchased from the Algonquins; they would have helped her balance on the icy path.
Still, Maman Poulin was merry company, telling the girls everything she knew about those who dwelled in the houses they passed. The long, thin ribbon farms ran down to the river, each with its own stretch of waterfront, so they had occasion to cross dozens of homesteads. Several times along the way the widow stopped to talk to the habitants as they rushed out of their homes and down to the river to greet them. On the first occasion, Marthe whispered her plan to the others: that she, Thérèse, and Françoise would forge on towards Jeanne’s cabin, while Élisabeth and Apolline tarried behind to keep the widow distracted. Élisabeth muttered that Marthe would not know her house, let alone the witch’s hut, but Marthe said from all she had been told she would not mistake it.Before Élisabeth could protest further, the widow had drawn her over to greet a habitant and his wife.
Marthe and the two others stole away, growing smaller and smaller in the distance; when the widow called out for them to cool their heels, it was too late. They were gone.
“Now this is a sorry home,” Maman Poulin told Apolline when they finally reached the western edge of Élisabeth’s côte. “Dufossé and his wife rarely come into the village. Hélène lost a child soon after she delivered it, and I don’t think he has ever forgiven her. I say we stop and pay her a visit.”
“Oh Maman, I worry that we won’t get back before nightfall,” Élisabeth said, glancing at Apolline. “We have stopped so often already.”
“We must. A baker’s wife keeps a village’s secrets at her breast, and I know enough about this pair to insist that we look in on them.”
“Pray, let me travel on ahead,” Élisabeth begged. She had no desire to see her mouse of a neighbour Hélène in her misery. “I will tie up the broken shutter, and when you reach my door, I will have the fire started and we may eat our bread and cheese at my table. I am sure that Marthe and the others are already there.”
The widow was like a general: she did not like her troops to move without her command, and she had already lost half her company. Her face rumpled at the mutiny she faced.
“Do not fear, Maman Poulin,” Apolline broke in. “I will see Élisabeth safely to her door. You look in on the poor, childless mother and we shall see you within the hour.”
They took their leave of the widow and walked eastwards as quickly as they could.
“I will forge on to Jeanne’s cabin to help the others,” Apolline said as they neared Élisabeth’s house. She stifled a shriek as her boots slipped on the ice. “Can you make a show of having mended a broken shutter?”
“Don’t worry about me. You go on and find the others. And Apolline? Keepyour eye out for Chamberlen’s Secret. If you see it, whatever it is, do everything in your power to keep it safe.”
Élisabeth showed Apolline the path through the woods where she would find the witch’s hut and then turned to open the door to her home.
Inside, it was so cold she thought no amount of firewood could ever warm its wooden bones. She looked around the room. She had forgotten how perfect her home was. How the door fitted smoothly in its jamb. How the backs of the newly built chairs curved gracefully. Francoeur had sanded them over the course of the month of December, and he had promised to build more when their children came and claimed a place at the table. Élisabeth’s gaze fell on the straw mattress, lying plumped and waiting on the floor.
The mattress where she had let him believe that her piety and fear stopped her from lying with him, when all the while she had longed to feel his calloused hands on her body. Like a wolf on a rabbit, as Maman Poulin said.
Yet the grace of the sacrament of marriage came from its fertility, and she knew from the feeling of the demon sharpening its claws on her womb that she was still barren. Without children, their marriage bed would have been a pit of sin.
Consider, consider. Witchcraft does not exist.
Élisabeth crossed the room, sweeping her hands across the hearth to try to locate the tinder in the dim light. What if Jeanne Roy was right? What if witches were not real? But if that were so,whyhad she lost her baby?
Rémy wanted to be rid of you, that’s why.
She tried to ignore the demon’s taunts, but she could not help but think of her lover: Rémy with his wiry frame and feline appetite, pouncing on her day after day, pawing at her stays as if she were a doll for him to undress. She found the tinder and clutched it in her fist.
She must have been mad to think herself in love with him. She must have been a fool to believe they would marry.
She dropped to her knees to build the fire and saw there was barely enoughkindling to catch, and not a log left inside to burn. She would have to bring some in from the woodpile. The woodpile Francoeur had carefully cut and stacked before the onset of winter.
All around her it was plain what she needed.
Francoeur, who had built a home for her with his bare hands.
