A sense of great weariness came over her. Finally, it was time to confess.
“No, husband. He could not hurt me. Marcosi would savage anyone who tries to touch me.”
“Marcosi?” Francoeur froze. “Who is Marcosi?”
She blinked, trying to find the words.
“I see.” Francoeur swallowed. He laid his hands on the table, pressing his fingertips into the wood. “Do you love him?”
She shook her head, drawing her hands into her lap. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I hate him.”
“Élisabeth, listen to me,” he said, leaning forward. “I would not begrudge you if you once hoped to marry another. I have a past too.”
She looked down at her hands. The skin between her thumb and forefinger was cracked and red from the number of times she had wrung her hands.
“I want to know about your past,” she said.
“Then I will tell you, if it means you might tell me about your Marcosi.” He laid his hand on top of hers. When she did not speak, he began.
“I will start, then. My father was a cruel and violent man. My mother was forced to take refuge with the Poor Clares for her own safety. I was not yet grown when she left, only fourteen, and I was lonely. To avoid my father’s fists, I spent time down by the docks. I met a girl—”
“I don’t want to hear about your other women.” Élisabeth pulled her hand away, then immediately wished she had not. “I want to hear how you became a hero. How you shot Lafredière.”
“I am no hero.”
“Your friends talk as if you are.”
Francoeur looked away, as if what she had said was painful. She followed his gaze. Some of the customers stroked their beards as they glanced at her husband. One nodded respectfully, another tipped his hat.
“It is a misunderstanding.” He put his hands on the table. “But if I confess all, you must tell me what possessed you to take him on.”
“Yes. I will tell you what possessed me,” she whispered.
He drew in a deep breath and sighed. “Very well. You know half of it. We were sent to burn the Iroquois villages and crops. Lafredière was not acting as the military governor then, he was our captain. A worse officer you could not imagine. He knew nothing of fighting, or marching, or anything except that as the nephew of the regiment’s commander, he was to be obeyed. We were not dressed for the journey and when a winter storm rolled in, we could not see twopaces ahead. Yet still he ordered us onward. We were snow-blind and lost within a day. By the end of the month sixty men had died.”
“Frozen?” Élisabeth murmured, thinking of Dufossé in the woodshed.
He nodded. “We were so lost we didn’t know where we were. We crossed into English territory—what used to be Dutch land not so long ago. There was no grand, glorious battle with the Iroquois. We shot at a few trees and were forced to beg or buy food from settlers. One Dutchman called me a shitten rogue and spat on the bread before handing it over. I didn’t care. I stuffed the food in my mouth and begged him for more.”
“Why did you shoot the governor?”
He tugged on his beard as if he wanted to feel the sharp edge of pain. “Our allies, the Algonquins, were meant to guide us to the Agnier villages. But on the morning we were due to leave they did not appear. Of course they had stayed behind to wait out the storm, as they thought we would. They were dumbfounded that Lafredière would march us into a blizzard. When the snow settled and they saw that we had left, they tracked us down.
“We did not meet them until we were on the journey home. Our men were broken: frozen, starving, and mutinous. Lafredière saw a chance to deflect their anger away from his disastrous decision to lead us into a winter war. He started shouting, blaming our soldiers’ deaths on the Algonquins. He accused them of working with the Iroquois. He grabbed one of them by the throat and raised his pistol to his head. And before I knew what I was doing, I aimed my musket.”
“That was when you shot him?”
“Yes,” Francoeur’s voice was soft now. “But I missed. I only grazed his skull, though I took his eye.”
“But you intended to kill him. You wanted him dead.”
“I do not know what I wanted. I saw the Algonquin man—a boy, really—about to be murdered in cold blood and I shot my commander to make him stop. Everyone thinks me some kind of hero, but it was no more than rage. My rabid actions proved I am no better a man than my father.” Francoeur shookhis head. “Besides, within the year we returned and burned the Iroquois villages and food, along with two old women they’d left behind when they fled. So, no, Élisabeth, I am not a hero.”
She looked at his face, his lip curled in distaste at his own actions. She reached her hand across the table.
“It is not your fault if you gave in to rage when you shot Lafredière,” she said softly. “A demon took possession of you.”
He snorted and looked down at his hands. “You could say that.”
