“Yes,” Élisabeth said in a small voice.
“Angélique had a teacher who showed her many wondrous things. Butwhen her skill surpassed his own, he accused her of stealing his knowledge—as if knowledge is something that can be owned by one man alone. He sought to stop her rise. He told the church that she was a dangerous witch. The innocent women she cared for were also accused.”
“The Normandy coven,” Élisabeth said, barely above a whisper.
“Their torment lasted weeks. Terrible things were done to them, in the name of God. All those women, suffering for nothing more than having a little learning. So when you ask me if she is a witch, this is all I can tell you.”
Consider, consider. Witchcraft does not exist.
Élisabeth felt a tug on her heart as she thought of the child she had lost. And all that she had lost since: Rémy, her home in Saint-Philbert, and now Francoeur. What if Jeanne was right? What if Rémy had wanted to be rid of her, and witchcraft wasnotthe root of her misfortune?
“If witchcraft does not exist, then I have been sorely deceived,” Élisabeth sniffed. But who had deceived her but her own self? She had taken Rémy’s hand and walked up to the clifftop. She could have listened to the old cook’s warning and kept her distance. She might never have fallen for his eel-tongued promises. But she had not listened. She hadwantedto lie with him at the top of the world. She was wayward, after all. She had chosen her own path. “What I mean is, I have been a fool. A wretched goosecap fool.” Élisabeth took a deep breath. “It is as Jeanne Roy said. I have been… ignorant.”
For the first time since she had entered the witch’s hut, the stranger’s face softened a little. She reached out and put her hand on Élisabeth’s arm.
“You are young. Perhaps you are not ignorant, only innocent.” The woman’s words caused tears to prick at the corners of Élisabeth’s eyes. She blinked them back as Wari continued. “The question is, what will you do to grow wise?”
Élisabeth wished she could unravel the last six months. She might try the cure Jeanne Roy offered. She would consider Marthe’s happiness as much as her own. She would give herself the chance to fall in love with her husband.
Too late, too late.
As if Wari could read her thoughts, she rose. “It is late,” she said. “And I have far to travel.”
“Wait,” Élisabeth said, blinking up at her. “You asked what I would do to grow wise. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
Wari paused and then opened her beaded bag. She reached her hand into its depths, and then pulled out Jeanne Roy’s ragged doll.
Élisabeth started to recoil from the dreadful poppet. Then she stopped.
She had once been afraid of the familiar spirit. In truth, she had been afraid of everything: the doll, the Winter Witch, the native people she saw in the village, the demon inside her. She had been frightened out of her wits. Yet here she was, in a witch’s hut with an Iroquois woman, reconciled with her demon. And she was safe. Perhaps she had no cause to fear any of the things that frightened her.
She reached for the ragdoll. She was surprised at the weight of it. It was heavy, like a sack of plums. She held it in her lap.
“Thank you for your kindness in calling my ignorance by a gentler name,” she said. “But you are right. If I have been innocent, then I must grow wise. I must undo what I have done. This doll… Jeanne prizes it above all other things. Do you think it has the power to save her?”
Wari gave Élisabeth a mournful look. “I do not know.”
“We can take it to her. Perhaps she can use it…” Élisabeth looked doubtfully at the cloth creature, its yarn eyes unravelling, its feet dirty and frayed. If Jeanne Roy wasn’t a witch, what good would a child’s plaything do? The impossibility of the task sat heavily on her.
“I need to convince the old priest that she is not a witch, while hoping that she truly is, so that she might have the power to escape. I don’t know how to undo this knot.”
Wari held her gaze. “Angélique is being held in a prison within the grounds of the old fort.”
Élisabeth bit her lip. She had accused Jeanne Roy of causing Dufossé’sdeath by witchcraft. What could she do to make Father de Sancy doubt her word? How could she protect Hélène, who did not deserve to die for defending herself against a brutal man? And how could she convince Francoeur to love her once more?
She sat with the witch’s familiar on her knees, feeling the weight of the doll pressing down on her. Jeanne Roy said she was an ignorant peasant. Élisabeth knew that was not true. Now she had to prove it. She had to think. She had to figure out a way to save the witch and win her husband back.
35
The sickening sound of the chapel bells rang out across the village, each clang reverberating deep into Marthe’s bones.
She wished she were braver. If she had more daring, she would stand outside the fort—now twice consecrated to make sure the Devil could not come to the aid of Ville-Marie’s most prized prisoner—and chant her prayers out loud so that Jeanne might hear them through the walls and know that she had supporters still. But if Marthe did that, the village might point their fingers at her next. And worse, she might hear the grunt of the executioner as he did the priest’s bidding, and the low moans of their victim, the witch.
Marthe had brought fresh bread and water to Jeanne that morning, and her stomach had turned at what she had seen: ankles bruised and twisted from being shut in the brodequins, and fresh lash marks on her back and arms. She remembered the pain and terror of the governor’s hands around her neck and could not fathom how Jeanne had withstood the Question for more than two weeks. Perhaps it was because Father de Sancy was going about his task languorously, standing over his prisoner hour after hour, day after day, watching as the executioner hammered the brodequin boots while he asked her precisely when—and how—she fornicated with the Devil.
“How much longer, do you think?” Thérèse asked in a forlorn voice. Marthe shrugged, a timid movement that the others barely registered.
“The other Sulpicians have left the chapel,” Apolline told them. She had all the answers as usual. “So Nones has finished. It can’t be much longer.” She made the sign of the cross, and the others did the same.
