Chapter 7 #2
“Sister Gagnon,” she said, rising to her feet. “May we go to the hospital chapel today? I should like to thank the Blessed Virgin for our deliverance. If we do not offer our prayers immediately, we risk the saints’ wrath.”
“Calm yourself, child. The saints will not forsake you for praying in a corner of this house rather than in Ville-Marie.”
The nun turned to direct the farmhands where to put the next delivery of trunks. élisabeth followed her.
“Would the missionaries in Ville-Marie not be heartened by our example, though, of coming to hear Mass the very day after our arrival? Would we not inspire the villagers with our devotion and piety?”
“Please, Sister Gagnon,” Lou chimed in, tripping across the room to plead with the nun.
“élisabeth is right. We must go to the chapel to show everyone how pious we are! Would the bachelors of Ville-Marie not like to see our… piety?” Lou wiggled her bottom as the other girls laughed.
There was no stopping the brides’ pleas now.
They crowded around the nun, begging to be allowed to visit the village.
Sister Gagnon resisted, pushing past them towards the far corner of the room.
“Where is your trunk?”
élisabeth saw that one mattress in the dormitory was pulled away from all the others. Beside it stood the velvet witch, looking out the window, wearing the thin ratine nightdress she had been given the night before. When she realized the nun was speaking to her, she turned around.
“Are you quite certain that all of the chests have been delivered?” the witch asked. She had the same haughty manner as when she spoke to élisabeth on the beach. You’re a peasant. You’ve probably seen very little in your life. élisabeth scowled at her, though the witch paid her no mind.
“Yes. All but yours, it seems,” the nun said.
“I can’t imagine what has happened to it.”
The nun sighed. “What is your name? I will send a message back with the carter to check the ship’s hold again.”
The witch paused and looked down her long nose at the nun. “I am Jeanne. Jeanne Roy. Perhaps you could lend me something until my travelling clothes have been laundered?”
Sister Gagnon frowned. “None of my sisters have clothing that will fit one so… slender as you.” She looked up to see élisabeth staring at them. “You. You’re thin. Do you have spare skirts for Jeanne Roy?”
élisabeth froze. She did not want to give this so-called Jeanne Roy—the letter thief, the witch with the velvet dress, the sea serpent—any of her possessions. She did not want to be near the dangerous creature.
“I want to go to Ville-Marie,” she said meekly.
The nun looked surprised. “Are you trying to barter with me?”
“N-no, Sister,” élisabeth stammered, though from the rush of whispers behind her she knew that’s precisely what the other brides thought.
“It’s only that I want to thank the Blessed Virgin for our survival and not anger the saints.
It’s been a very long, very frightening journey, and at least a half dozen of us did not survive, and I am desperate—quite desperate—to go to church and take communion.
I must tell the Holy Virgin how grateful I am.
I do not feel I can eat, or sleep, or rest until I have done so. ”
Sister Gagnon frowned, then finally the muscle in her jaw relaxed and she cupped élisabeth under the chin.
“You are a pious girl. Get me a skirt for this one, and if everyone has completed their chores by midday, we can go to the chapel this afternoon.”
The brides erupted into applause. élisabeth heaved a sigh of relief, then remembered what it had cost her.
She would have to give the witch a gift.
If she did not agree, the trip to the chapel would surely be withdrawn.
She glanced at Jeanne Roy, who had turned back to the window, her arms folded across her chest. It would be dangerous to give a witch an item of her clothing, but more so to defy her.
She swallowed and knelt by her trunk. She opened the lid and saw that her linens bore the mark of having been wet and then dried again. A yellow stain crept across two chemises and one of her petticoats. Half of her clothing was ruined.
She reached for the pine-stained petticoat then pulled back.
Would it anger Jeanne Roy if the clothes she was offered weren’t the very best?
The other petticoat was her favourite, one she had spent long evenings stitching by the fire when her brothers and Papa were all still alive, before she left to work in the Delaunay household and everything had changed.
She could not bear to part with it. She stared at the linens and felt the turmoil stirring in her belly.
She also could not risk vexing the velvet witch.
She reached for her best petticoat and her only other skirt.
Then she rummaged and found her holy water vessel tucked down the side of the trunk.
She clutched the talisman in her hand for protection.
She approached the witch slowly with her eyes averted. She was about to hand the skirts over when she caught sight of a lump on Jeanne Roy’s mattress.
A baby’s grey corpse.
élisabeth gasped and dropped the skirts on the floor. She looked to the witch—a snarl spreading across her face—and then back to the dead child.
It was nothing but a homespun cloth doll.
élisabeth exhaled so forcefully she thought she might fall to the ground.
She gazed at the witch’s familiar more carefully.
The shock of tangled soot-coloured yarn on the poppet’s head was a rival for its mistress’s own black hair.
The eyes had been poorly stitched and its arms flopped over its head, while the legs were rigid, ending in heavy stumps, as if Jeanne Roy had not the time nor the inclination to turn the heel and give the poor creature feet.
It was so hideous that it was bewitching.
élisabeth could not stop herself from reaching out towards the doll.
“Don’t touch it,” Jeanne Roy warned.
élisabeth stumbled backwards as surely as if she had been struck. She turned and started to scamper across the room, squeezing her holy water vessel tightly.
“Wait,” the witch called out. élisabeth felt her legs go rigid, and then experienced an added jolt of fear—for did the priest not say stiffness was an indication of demonic possession? Fixed to the spot, she cringed and turned her shoulders towards Jeanne Roy.
“Thank you,” the witch said clutching the skirts in her hand. “For the clothes.”
élisabeth dared to meet her eye. The witch’s face was tense, as if she was trying to control her pride—or her fury. élisabeth did not wait to find out. She dropped her eyes and hurried back to the safety of her own trunk.