3
Élisabeth could not think straight. Somewhere in the obscurity of theSaint-Jean-Baptiste’s lower deck was the woman with the velvet dress. A thief, certainly. And maybe a witch.
For surely Élisabeth had not dropped her certificate like the half-wit Marthe thought she was. Surely it was the same letter, with the inkblot on the top of the page. The priest’s words rattled around her mind. Out at sea, who would protect them from a witch’s wrath?
She of all people knew what it was to suffer a witch. And she knew she could not survive another.
She must share her suspicions with Father de Sancy.
Élisabeth spotted the deckhand who had greeted them when they boarded, still stationed by the staircase. She slowed her approach.
“Where d’you think you’re going?” the sailor asked. He used his chin to point in her direction, his arms firm across his chest.
“I’m looking for the priest.”
“Not up here you’re not.”
Élisabeth stepped back. “Will we never get to go up on deck?”
“Sure y’will. But not until we’re out at sea. Captain’s orders. Not long back,one of you slatterns jumped ship when it was barely out of harbour. I s’pose the witless creature thought twice about going to Canada to have her scalp sliced clean off her head by savages.”
The sailor made a slow gesture with his thumb across his forehead and grinned. Élisabeth’s mouth dropped open, and she clasped her hands together.Squeeze, glide to prayer and past, squeeze again. She repeated the soothing rhythm to herself twice more while thinking what to say. The man seemed startled when he noticed she was still standing there.
“Get back to yer bunk. You’ll be fed soon enough.”
The sailor bared his teeth and Élisabeth sank back into the shadows, where she hovered, not wanting to return to Marthe and the other giggling brides. The captain had invited the priest to dine, so if she could find his cabin she might be able to speak to Father de Sancy. She waited in the shadows, watching as the sailor grew bored, picking his teeth with his fingernails. When a shriek of laughter erupted and the deckhand turned away to growl at the unruly girls, Élisabeth did not hesitate. She gripped the railing with both hands and stole away up the ladder to the upper deck.
The wooden beams creaked under her feet as she crept along the corridor, feeling her way with her fingers. After a moment she saw a crack of light outlining what must be the door to a cabin and crept towards it. She heard a voice as she approached.
“… I long to be massacred in my bed…”
Élisabeth stopped. It was the old priest, speaking loudly enough for her to hear him clearly. She leaned towards the door.
“No, I mean it sincerely! The Jesuits believe they have a stranglehold on martyrdom, but we priests of the Sulpician order are just as anxious to prove our worth to God. I do not mind if I am slain if the Blessed Virgin knows that I died a faithful servant.”
She could not decipher the mumbled reply of a male voice. The captain? Then came the high-pitched contribution of the chaperone.
“I agree with Father de Sancy. I too would rather take my chances being captured by the Iroquois than by witches. The troops of the Carignan-Salières regiment have no pistol that can stop a witch, do they?”
The sudden thud of boots coming down the corridor made Élisabeth draw back from the captain’s door and rush towards the front of the ship. When she could travel no farther, she waited, crouched in what appeared to be a storeroom full of barrels, her heart beating like a hare’s.
The priestwishedto be martyred. Élisabeth tried to imagine anyone so devout—so confident of their sanctity and contrition—that they would hope for such a thing. To pray, even, for their own slaughter. Papa was as good a man as she had ever known, and even he was frightened near the end. She remembered how he had called her to his bedside on the day she left to work for the Delaunays, his thin, grey hair lying defeated across the crown of his head. He told her to keep her head down and her hand out. He promised it would only be a month or two until he was back on his feet and she could come home. He said the money she’d earn would pay for a barber-surgeon to speed him through his sickness.
Élisabeth pushed away the memory of the squat barber with his large, fumbling fingers. Slowly, she felt her way out of the storeroom back to her position outside the captain’s door. Father de Sancy was still talking.
“The king and the court are caught up with their mathematical interests and philosophies and their insufferable Académie,” he scoffed. “They are as slavish to the latest thinking as they are to the latest fashion. But they are grossly mistaken to believe that witchcraft can be explained away by natural causes, or that it is the whim of one’s imagination. Witches’ power is irrefutable. And I believe it is highly probable that within every coven is one with evenmorepower than the rest. She who controls the others, like the queen of a hive controls her bees.”
“What do you mean, Father? A queen bee of witches?” Madame Étienne sounded puzzled. Élisabeth pressed her ear up against the door. She too longed to understand the priest’s meaning.
“Yes. In fact, I am writing a treatise, a compendium ofmaleficia, to detail how it is that some witches have so much power they can possess otherwise ordinary women—women like yourself, Madame Étienne—and bid them to do their will.”
“What does the queen witch do to these other women?”
“To otherwitches, you mean. Once she has polluted them with her magic, they are forever tainted. A worker bee’s sting is no less than his queen’s, after all.”
“I see.” The chaperone’s voice was more muted now. The captain spoke, but again Élisabeth did not catch what he said. The priest boomed back a reply.
“A very good question! Witches are obsessed with the male organ, with making men impotent and women barren. They are addicted to the carnal act and desire nothing more than to fornicate with the Devil as often as they can. But their greatest fiendishness comes in the causing of demonic possession, the scourge afflicting our country of late. I will tell you a tale, if I may. A chilling story. One that I saw with my own eyes at the Hospitalières convent in Louviers, some twenty years ago.”
