Isola

Chapter 26

26

I walked with Auguste by the shore, and we tried to understand what God had given us. As the tide came in, we wondered how we could raise a child in this place.

“It is impossible,” I said.

“But we have no choice,” he answered.

I said, “It would be different if we lived in another country, and we had our independence.”

“We are independent here,” Auguste said wryly.

“I meant if we had means.”

Auguste said, “That is a great many ifs.”

“But if we were at home.”

“You would have been betrothed to someone else.”

“There might have been a chance.”

“None at all,” said Auguste. “God brought us together on the voyage.”

“And did he also bring us here?”

“He must have.”

“Do you ever doubt him?”

“Yes.”

I turned to Auguste, and I thought how rare he was to believe and yet to doubt—to entertain both. I had always envied Damienne and Claire their faith, but I loved him because his heart was complicated.

We stood upon the rocks to look out at the ocean. The sea was silver. The sky pearl. We could not see another place, only our own island, rare and desolate. Our city was of birds and our land could not sustain us. Such was our fate to live at the world’s edge.

Auguste said, “It does seem cruel.” He meant to bring a child into our captivity.

“What shall we do?”

Slowly, he answered, “Work, and hunt, and try to live.”

He accepted our misfortune, but frightened as I was, every wicked thought occurred to me. Better to fall upon the rocks. Better to miscarry.

Secretly, I hoped and believed that I would lose the child, for I scarcely ate and could not rest. Living as we did, there would be no lying in for me. While Auguste hunted, I fetched water. While Damienne butchered, I built up our fire.

“I will not carry to term,” I told Damienne.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Because I am always scrambling over rocks.”

But she answered, “There are many born at home to mothers who must work and scramble.”

These words startled me. I am one who works, I thought. I am one of many.

Even as I walked about, I felt my infant quicken. First it fluttered, and then I felt it kick decisively, and I wondered it should be so strong. Surely, I thought, it will be a son. And then I thought, He will be fair like Auguste. And in time, I began to dream.

I dreamed my son became a prince. He had the isle to himself, and he lived in a stone tower. Oceans played at his feet, and birds swore to him allegiance, though he was but a child. My boy rode a horse upon the shore, and birds parted before him. When my son lifted his hand, our blue-eyed birds flew into the sky, ten thousand arrows, all for him.

Waking in the night, I felt the infant move under my skin. I was a drum, and he was drumming. “Can you feel it?” I whispered to Auguste, and he covered my belly with his hand and knew what I did. Our son would fear nothing.

“He will be tall,” said Auguste.

“And wise,” I said.

In this way, we began to love our unseen child. And this was the strangest change of all—that I began to fear the loss I had once wished. I longed to see my infant and to hold it.

“That is the way with women and their children,” said Damienne as the three of us sat outside when work was done. “Your mother felt the same, but her eyes closed even as you came into the world.”

“Alas,” I murmured. Damienne had told me of this loss many times before, but now I understood it.

“Why did she die?” Auguste asked.

“A fever burned her up,” said Damienne.

“Do you tell me that to frighten me?” I asked.

“Only to say she longed to see her child,” Damienne said. “And in that way, you are like her.”

“You do not usually compare me favorably,” I said, trying to speak lightly.

Damienne scarcely seemed to hear. “And she was just your age. Twenty.”

After she went inside to sleep, Auguste sat with me under the stars.

“I would not forgive myself your death,” he said.

I answered, “I could die a thousand ways.”

“All because of me—because I brought you here.”

“You didn’t bring me,” I reminded him. “We came here together.”

—

By September’s end, the wild grass died, and brambles lost their leaves. There were no berries left upon the island, only thorns.

In October, the seabirds left their rookery. They called and wheeled in the wind, and then one morning, they opened their white wings and flew away.

“I wish,” said Auguste, but he did not need to finish because I wished the same. If only we could fly with them.

The next day we woke to a white world. The wind was white. Snow masked the sun. How had the birds known? How had they chosen the last day to leave?

Ice slicked the rocks outside our cave. Snow buried our accustomed paths. We thought it was a rogue storm, because we could not imagine drifts so early, but the wind did not relent and snow kept falling.

We began to wear our clothes in layers. Two shirts for Auguste, double petticoats for Damienne and me. We emptied our buried trunks of linens, piling them upon our bed. Over these, we smoothed our canvas sail so that on chill mornings, it was difficult to leave our nest.

Because we dared not build a fire where we slept, we lit ours at the entrance of the cave. Here we heated stones all day. At night, we slipped them between our sheets.

The wind was now so bitter that we scarcely ventured out. Instead, we crouched together while Auguste ruled a new page of our calendar. November, December, January. With practiced hands, Damienne felt me and said, “The child will arrive in March. In spring.” But spring seemed a distant country.

The sun was alien now. When we gathered wood, the world was hushed, and our white isle was brighter than the sky. We shook snow from the twigs we used for kindling and stumbled in the gloom as darkness settled early. I walked with Auguste, and he said, “Hold on to me,” because it was so slippery.

“It is my boots,” I told him, but Auguste stopped me with his hand.

A shadow, a quiver in the snow. An animal so close we might have touched him in five paces. A fox, but nothing like the ones at home. This fox was white, even to his whiskers and plumed tail.

Motionless, we stood, and so did he. We looked at him and wondered how he could be real. Small as he was, the animal was kingly. How warm, how rich, his velvet fur must be. Slowly, Auguste set down his load. Quiet as he could, he locked his gun—but in a flash the fox was gone. He was too pure and quick, too clever to be killed.

“If I had been alone,” I said, “I would have thought my eyes deceived me.”

Auguste said, “But he was real. We could not both be dreaming.”

We were silent then, as though we had seen an angel. Perhaps the fox had been one. How else could he vanish? He must have been a spirit. But walking on, we saw tracks like running stitches, and we knew he stepped upon the ground.

“He is mortal,” I said, even as fresh snow erased his tracks. All traces of the creature disappeared, for winter made a mystery of everything.

—

Falling snow filled up our footprints. Lightly, snow brushed every rock and living thing. We melted snow for water. Snow lit our way under the moon, but drifts deepened and we could not walk far.

I mended with Damienne near the entrance of the cave. We worked on our kneeling cushions and tried to make the most of our scant light. Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we prayed. We repeated the order of the service and pleaded softly for ourselves.

I asked for deliverance, but not from sin. I prayed, Please deliver me of my child so we both can live. And without confidence, I begged, Please send us better weather so we do not freeze.

Alas, in the first week of December, it pleased God to send another storm. The sky was white as milk, and snow fell so fast that we could hardly see. Within hours, drifts buried the entrance of our cave. “Better not to tunnel out,” said Auguste. “The snow will block the wind.” And so, we sheltered in our cavern for three long days. We ate our salted meat and drank our last dregs of wine, and in the dark, we were afraid.

We could not read or sew or even see the Virgin because we had no candles. In silence, we huddled in our nest until Damienne turned to me. “Recite then. Say your psalms.”

“Now?”

“When better?” she told me.

Then I recited Marot’s rhymes. “ He makes darkness his secret place. / In heavy clouds, he hides his face. ”

“You see that God is with us,” Damienne told me.

I said, “ With the steadfast, you are pure. ”

“Go on,” said Damienne.

“ With the forward, you are less sure. ”

“God is in the darkness and the clouds,” said Damienne.

I said, “In the storm itself?”

And she said, “Assuredly.”

“But why? To punish us?”

“To humble us,” she said.

“Listen,” Auguste told us.

We listened but heard nothing. Damienne said, “Not a sound.”

“Exactly,” he said. “The wind is dying off.”

The air was still when Auguste took our axe and broke the seal at our door. He chipped a jagged hole, and I saw ashen sky. He cut a bigger opening, and when he stepped out, I followed him to see our isle soft with drifts. All the jagged rocks were buried, as was the wild grass, except where the wind blew, revealing a single strand.

—

We thought we had set aside great stores, but this winter was longer, colder, and darker than any we had known. We finished our salted meat and rationed our dried cod. As other creatures do in winter, we ate less and slept longer. The nights were so long that it seemed the whole world was asleep.

Earth and sky and sea were white. The sea itself had turned to ice. Water was no barrier between our island and the mainland.

Strange to think that we could leave, just as we pleased, stepping on what had been ocean. Animals might come and go, and we could walk across the sea, but the ice led to vaster wilderness, and we were not strong enough to carry our supplies.

Sleeping for so many days, I dreamed my child grew round as a melon on the vine. He flourished while I withered under him. I shriveled, even as he thrived.

A sharp pang woke me, and I tried to sit. My body cramped but did not bleed. Even as I crouched in darkness and in want, I felt my infant kick incessantly, and I could sleep no longer.

“Eat.” Damienne gave me water and salted fish—always the same, and yet I took it eagerly. It was Auguste who lost his appetite.

He felt a weakness and an ache. Where I touched his belly, he was tender, and when he tried to eat, he vomited. Nor could he drink but vomited the water too. He heaved even when his body was quite empty, and then black bile came up from his mouth.

“It is the salt fish,” Damienne said. “It is the food causing this distemper.” But we had nothing else.

He must eat, but he could not. He must sit and raise his heart, but he could scarcely turn his head. “It is not the food,” he said. “It is the pain.” And he touched his tender belly.

Damienne wrapped a heated stone in cloth and placed it near his hurt, but this brought little comfort, and the next day he was worse. His stomach was distended, and the tender place was hard.

A fever flushed his face. His eyes were glassy, and his lips parched. Bleeding might have drawn the illness out, but we had no instruments or leeches, nor had we spirits or even wine. Our bottles stood empty, except for our pot of jam. We opened that and gave him quince to eat. Auguste said that it was good. His expression brightened, and we rejoiced, seeing that the preserves revived him.

His hands did not tremble, nor did his teeth chatter. He did not fall into delirium, nor was he too sick to recognize our faces. He was alert and eager to improve. He said, “I will fight my way.” But he grew weaker. His body burned, and he breathed hard. He said it was like climbing a mountain.

I ate little, and if I slept, I hardly knew. I sat up with Auguste as he fought for life and breath. Even as he struggled, I did not believe that God would take him from me—not while I was watching. And so, I held vigil with Damienne, and I could not distinguish day from night. I did not keep the calendar as Auguste had done, and I lost the time.

I do not know the day it happened, but in darkness, Auguste raised his head and cried out once. Then he sank back, breathing more easily.

Now I thought that he had conquered sickness. His body was no longer tense as I asked, “Is the pain better now?”

He answered, “Yes.”

“Sleep,” I begged.

But he stared at me with haunted eyes. “I am afraid that if I sleep, I will not wake.”

“I will watch.”

“You cannot prevent it.”

“You will wake,” I told him.

“Forgive me,” he said, as though he would make confession.

Alarmed, I said, “There is nothing to forgive.”

“I tempted you aboard the ship.”

“I tempted you as well.”

“It was my fault,” he said, and by this, he meant he was a man.

“Why do you talk of faults?” I asked.

“Because we are punished for them.”

“Rest now,” Damienne tried to soothe him.

But he told me, “Listen.”

“What is it?”

“Keep the wood close by.”

“I know,” I said.

“And save the powder when you can. When the ice breaks, you must try to fish.”

“Not without you.”

“Take my cloak,” he said, “and wear my boots.”

“No,” I protested.

“You have seen me shoot.”

“Yes.”

“Hold the gun and load it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take the gun.”

“She will hurt herself,” Damienne protested.

But he propped himself up, speaking urgently. “Bring it here and show me.”

I fetched an arquebus and brought it to him without powder. “Now take your rope,” he said, and I held up a piece of rope that would serve as a slow-burning fuse. “Show me how you’ll light it.”

I mimed sparking fire from flint and touching the rope’s end.

“Show me how you’ll fill the powder.”

I blew upon the musket’s pan as I had seen him do and pretended to pour powder in.

“Shake it down,” he said.

I shook the gun and held it vertically, butt at my feet, muzzle pointing up.

“Now ram the powder in.”

I pulled out the arquebus’s metal rod and rammed it down the gun’s long throat. I did this once and then twice more.

“Show me how you aim. No, hold it farther from your face.”

Trembling, I shouldered the gun in our dark cave.

“Take your fuse and open the pan.”

I took the end of my rope and opened my pan as I would to set off an explosion.

“Can you feel the trigger?”

Cold and heavy, the trigger grazed my fingers.

“Show me again,” he said.

Once again, I mimed loading and firing.

“Again.”

Twice more. Four times more, I showed him how I would light my fuse and load the musket. My arms were tired, and my very soul began to faint, but he made me practice until he was satisfied. “Now you can defend yourself. And you can hunt.”

“You said it was too dangerous.”

“But you must live when I am gone.”

“How can I?”

“Carry the knife.”

“No,” I pleaded.

“Say you will.”

“I will do anything,” I said, “if you but close your eyes. Rest now, and you will wake again.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise you.”