Chapter 6
Marthe leaned out over the railing, watching the unbroken line of trees.
A dark garrison standing against invaders.
Below, the river teemed with boats—sloops on business from Québec and barques carrying dry goods, as well as canoes and pinnaces and rowboats—but there was nothing to see onshore but trees.
She shifted uneasily on her feet. “We should be there by now, shouldn’t we?”
Lou frowned. “I don’t like it.”
“We should have stayed in Québec,” said Rose.
Marthe looked back at her friends. It was what they were all thinking.
The Montréalistes had left behind the oceangoing Saint-Jean-Baptiste—and the bulk of the other brides—in Québec and had transferred to a smaller riverboat five days earlier.
There was such a heavy summer rainstorm when they arrived that they had rushed from the king’s vessel to the riverboat with barely a chance to bid anyone goodbye, let alone take in the sights of the little town.
Now that they were sailing upriver towards Ville-Marie, the wonders of the New World would finally be revealed to them.
Except there was nothing to see at all.
“I’m sure the village will be around the next bend,” Marthe said. After all, they had miraculously survived a storm at sea; God would not guide them through such an ordeal only to abandon them in the wilderness weeks later.
Maybe their survival was not due to God’s grace.
When Father de Sancy had emerged from his cabin, green with seasickness, he claimed the lion’s share of the credit for their safe deliverance due to his own intercessions with the Holy Virgin.
But in the days after the storm, the sailors had whispered about the woman in the velvet dress who could sew sails faster and more urgently than a galloping mare, leaving Marthe to wonder who she was, and what part she had played in their rescue.
When the velvet lady had changed ships with them in Québec and boarded the smaller boat for the island of Montréal, Marthe had felt a frisson of excitement.
The mysterious woman was travelling with them to the end of the known world.
But the woman’s presence seemed only to add to élisabeth’s despair.
Most of the girls had put the ordeal of the storm quickly behind them, adding it to their trunk of terrible things to consider later, like the weevils in the ship’s biscuit and the rats scurrying in gloom-soaked corners.
Only élisabeth seemed truly shaken by their near shipwreck.
For weeks after she had smashed her head, she could do nothing but lie in their bunk with her arm flung over her eyes.
When awake, she assailed Marthe with questions about tempests and witches and demons while Marthe tried to feed her crumbs of hard tack.
Marthe began to think that although the red welt on her forehead had faded, she might have been left demented by the blow.
“Perhaps we won’t arrive in Ville-Marie until tomorrow,” Rose said. “It is late in the day.”
“The captain said we would sleep on land tonight,” Marthe insisted. “I’m going to get Lili. She shouldn’t miss the first sight of the village. We will remember it for the rest of our lives.”
Marthe crept below deck, hardly needing any light to find the corner of the boat where they had been stowed like any other exported good, and not even the most precious at that. élisabeth was sitting near their trunks, scratching the side of the boat with her fingernails.
“We’re almost at Ville-Marie,” Marthe announced. élisabeth did not answer. She carried on etching a pattern into the wood, a back-and-forth swirl that grew faster with every loop. “Did you hear me?”
élisabeth did not look up. “Yes. Yes, I heard. Where is the witch?”
Marthe sighed. “I told you already. Father de Sancy found no witches on board. He went ashore at Québec. You saw him go.”
élisabeth stopped her scratching and rubbed her hand lightly over her brow.
“Does your head hurt still?” Marthe took a step forward to check her sister’s injury.
élisabeth pressed her hand to her forehead, blocking Marthe’s view.
Marthe felt a prickle of irritation and took a step back.
“Tonight we will be ashore and the nuns will have a cabbage leaf to lay on your crown. That will soothe your pain.”
“I speak of the witch who said our prayers were no use. The one in the velvet dress. Where is she now?”
Marthe bit her lip. She had to get élisabeth to shore. She was turning in circles, following her mind wherever it led her.
“Come, it’s time,” she said brightly. “I don’t imagine it will be as frantic docking here as it was in Québec, for that was a sight.
Girls trying to curl their hair after two months at sea and hitching up their skirts to show off their petticoats.
They needn’t have bothered. They had neither linen nor lace worth boasting about. ”
élisabeth looked up at Marthe. “You believe me, don’t you? That woman is a witch.”
Marthe sat down by élisabeth’s side. She could not deny there was something intriguing about the woman in the velvet dress.
The way she carried herself, tall and proud, and how she stood apart from the others, even now when there were only thirteen of them travelling upriver.
After all those weeks at sea, they did not even know her name.
“I admit there is something magical about her, but if there’s a hedge witch or a sorceress with us in New France, I shall be glad of it,” Marthe reasoned. “We might have need of her magic in the years to come.”
élisabeth stared at Marthe. “How can you speak of witchcraft so lightly? Does it not fill you with revulsion to think of those evil creatures and…” She dropped her voice, though there was no one nearby. “The things they do with the Devil?”
“I don’t mean evil witches. I mean the cunning folk.
Without their help, how else would one cure heartache or remove a wart?
Don’t forget you too once paid a sol to a soothsayer to hear your fortune.
What was she if not a hedge witch? She did you no harm.
Except to tell you that Agathe Prévost would marry before you. ”
élisabeth bit the corner of her cheek. “Do you think Agathe is married now?”
“Good luck to her if she is. I’ll never forget her stumbling into a blackberry bush when Bernard Salé tried to give her a handful of daisies. I’ve never seen a more awkward couple.”
“Perhaps her love for him made her weak at the knees.”
“Good grief, Lili!” Marthe exclaimed. “If she were clever she wouldn’t fall in love at all. If she must, she certainly shouldn’t choose someone who watched slack-jawed as she tumbled into a patch of brambles.”
élisabeth giggled—an uncertain hiccup that Marthe had not heard for months. Her heart lifted at the sound of it. “I should not laugh,” élisabeth whispered, suddenly sober again. “Bramble thorns spell poverty and sorrow. Poor Agathe.”
“I am sure she’s well enough. You have had greater trials than her. But today your luck shall change.”
élisabeth bowed her head. “I pray you are right. But do not speak of luck. Our fortune is thanks only to God’s mercy.”
Marthe squeezed her arm and encouraged her sister to stand.
élisabeth wobbled slightly at first, then brushed down her crumpled skirts.
Marthe was encouraged by this small act of vanity.
If her sister cared enough to smooth her skirts, she was on her way to being herself again.
Once they were ashore and settled, élisabeth would be well.
They emerged onto the deck and were struck by a sky the colour of a dying bonfire.
élisabeth flinched from not having seen the light all day, but Marthe imagined she could only feel better with the warmth of the evening sun on her face.
She guided her sister towards the side of the boat and saw that they were no longer moving.
They were moored several yards offshore.
“Where are we?” élisabeth asked, bewildered.
Marthe looked around. There was still no sign of the village. It was not at all like it had been when they docked in Québec. There was no wharf thronging with villagers and soldiers, rushing through the rain to greet them. Here, there was neither sign of any dwelling, nor of any souls at all.
“Where is Ville-Marie?” Marthe asked the others.
“You missed it,” Apolline said, her expression cloudy. “And no surprise, for there was little more than a dock and a crowd of native men. That cannot be where we are meant to settle.” For once, her voice was uncertain. She turned to face a boatman. “Was that Ville-Marie?”
“Calm yerselves,” said a rusty-haired sailor with whiskers to match. “With the fur fair on, it wasn’t safe to drop you at the quay in town. The nuns sent word to bring you out here.”
“Wasn’t safe?” élisabeth swayed.
“What’s a fur fair?” Marthe asked at the same time.
“It’s a lovely event where all the great ladies come and show off their furs,” the sailor jeered. “It’s very grand, you’ll see.”
Suddenly Lou shouted and pointed at the shore.
“Look!”
A small wooden boat was pushing off from a beach.
A woman with a black veil and white coif sat in the bow, a large man in a brown brimmed hat squarely in the middle of the boat.
They watched as he rowed steadily closer until the boat was near enough to bump up against the side of their vessel.
The nun craned her neck to look up at the crew.
“I’ve wasted an entire afternoon waiting for you to arrive.”
The captain leaned over the side of the riverboat. “We were given instructions not to stop at the quay but to bring the girls-for-marrying here. Are you Mother Bourgeoys?”
“I am not,” the nun said crossly, her wrinkled face inspecting the side of the ship. “Well? Get them down. We need them safely ashore before sunset and the hour is late.”
The captain beckoned to élisabeth and pointed at a rope ladder fixed to the side of the ship. “Descend.”