Chapter 17
The autumn wind was brisk enough to send the shingle on the outside wall clacking back and forth, and all day Marthe was not certain if customers were opening the door and coming into the shop or if the wind was merely toying with her.
She swept her broomstick across the bakery floor, leaving a small pile of flour in the corner.
She did not like the wind. A gale had been howling the night her brother Nicolas had disappeared.
It had been the same time of year, when the night comes early and the harvest is in.
Their elder brother, Jean-Jacques, had paced across the cottage’s stone floor, saying out loud what none of them knew to be true, that Nicolas was a sensible lad and he would return home from the tavern with nothing but a sore head and a tall tale.
élisabeth, then sixteen, had bent over the fire, adding so many sprigs of thyme to the tripe stew that she ruined the only meat they would have all week.
Finally, Papa had sent for the soothsayer.
The old woman arrived with a grimace, shaking her head about having been called out into the night’s fury.
She led them into their vegetable garden and plunged a pair of silver scissors into the earth, balancing a sieve on top of the handle.
The instrument careened in the wind, but she persisted with the charm, calling out to Saint Pierre and Saint Paul, asking them if Nicolas still lived. Turn, if yes! If no, stay still.
The sieve had spun round on the scissors, giving them all false hope.
A fresh clatter caused Marthe to drop her broomstick.
Was it the wind, or was there someone at the door?
She was still hoping the governor would come by the bakery.
The longer he stayed away, the more consequential she imagined his visit would be.
She hoped she had made a good impression, enough that he might offer them some small patronage—using his power to require that the fort purchase its bread from Verger, for instance.
But more than that, Marthe dreamed that the governor would stride into the humble bakehouse and reward her with the secret of how to trade furs with the natives. The secret of how to grow rich.
She tucked her broomstick behind the door to ward off evil and took a seat on Verger’s workbench.
Her husband was asleep, having shuffled off after the night’s bake, placing a kiss on the nape of her neck as he went through to their quarters.
Maman Poulin was in her salon, preoccupied with some scheme that she had not shared and that Marthe dared not enquire about lest she be told off for prying. The widow could be testy at times.
Marthe looked around the empty room and felt uncertain of what she should do next.
She wondered what Rose and Lou were doing on their farms, and if they had moments of loneliness too.
Her thoughts were drawn back to Nicolas, his unkempt hair, his easy laugh.
In the end they had found his body by throwing a communion wafer into the river Orne, the magic of the Eucharist revealing where her brother had drowned.
If he had not died, would any of their subsequent troubles have come to pass?
Marthe wished she could have paid for a Mass for his soul.
When she grew rich, she would buy for prayers for them all.
A gust of wind blew the bakehouse door open. Marthe leapt to her feet and tucked a strand of hair under her cap.
“Good day?” she called out.
“Hello, Marthe.”
It was élisabeth. Marthe had not seen her sister since her wedding day six weeks earlier.
With the memory of Nicolas stirring in her heart, part of Marthe yearned to run to élisabeth and tell her all the thousands of little things that had happened to her since she’d left to be married—how her husband hummed while he worked and she could not decide if it was endearing or annoying, how difficult it was to live under the widow’s critical gaze, how she had not bled this month and had been sick every morning for a fortnight.
élisabeth stood in the hallway, dark circles under her eyes, her hands twisting together. Something about the gesture triggered Marthe’s impatience. She would not forgive her sister’s deception too readily.
“Good day, élisabeth.”
“You will not call me Lili?” élisabeth smiled, a ghostly twitch that did not light her face.
Marthe held her head high. “Not at the moment, no.” They stood in silence until Marthe could no longer bear the void between them. “What are you doing here?”
“The nuns said I could attend Apolline’s wedding.
They have not granted me permission to leave the farmhouse since the day Jeanne Roy married; I’ve been kept back so that I might show my contrition and contemplate the Seven Joys of the Virgin…
” Her voice trailed off, her head hung in misery.
She took a breath and tried again. “I came to town early, with Rose and Lou, to see you. I’ve asked them to give us a moment alone…
” élisabeth’s hands were frothing furiously now.
Marthe wanted to reach out and calm them, to halt her sister’s distress.
“Because I know… I know the nuns are not the only ones I have angered.”
“No, they are not.” Marthe remained resolute, placing her hands on her hips.
élisabeth fell silent again, staring at the floorboards as the wind wailed outside. Marthe frowned and tapped her foot, wondering how long she could hold out. Her anger had melted away long ago, it always did. But her sister ought to suffer a little longer for the lies she had told.
“Do you think me wayward, Marthe?” élisabeth said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Marthe hesitated. “You were certainly led astray.”
élisabeth looked up, suddenly urgent. “The Devil comes for wayward girls, does he not?”
“Our Lady in Heaven! How am I to know what the Evil One does?”
élisabeth nodded, her hands still twisting. “I am sorry for what I did. I should have told you the truth about the curse. And about my wish to go home.”
“It is an impossible wish,” Marthe said gently. “You must know that.”
“I do. I do know it. Yet I cannot help wishing it.”
The sisters stood for a moment, the silence around them growing again. The skin around élisabeth’s eyes was blotchy and her lashes damp. She hesitated for a moment, and then the words tumbled from her mouth.
“Marthe, I am suffering. My anguish is so great, I fear I must be possessed. A wicked spirit has surely made its home inside me, I can feel that it has. Some days the beast leaps and dances so much I feel that I might faint.”
Marthe glanced over her shoulder towards Maman Poulin’s half of the house, pulling élisabeth into the workroom. “You seem thinner, but nothing worse than that. Put these wild thoughts of possession out of your mind.”
“My bones have grown sharp, it is true. No matter how much bread and lard I eat, the demon inside me consumes it all.”
Marthe settled her sister onto a stool by the edge of the hearth while she searched carefully for her words.
“I am fortunate in some ways,” she said. There was an easy answer to élisabeth’s riddle, and she needed her sister to see it. “We have all the bread we could ever want to eat. We also have meat or fowl several times a week. And there’s a pig in the yard that will see us through the winter.”
“You have all the luck of the stars.” élisabeth looked mournful and Marthe felt a twitch of frustration.
“You could be as lucky! When Rose and Lou last came to town they told me there’s a good man, a habitant, who wanted to marry you. Why did you refuse him?”
élisabeth squeezed her hands together. “You know I cannot marry.”
“Because of Rémy?” Marthe’s voice was sharp.
“Because of me. I think… I know now that I will never marry Rémy.” élisabeth’s voice wavered. “But even if I resign myself to living on this island for the rest of my days, how could I wed Francoeur, knowing that I am cursed?”
Marthe furrowed her brow. “I told you. Ask Jeanne Roy for a simple or a charm to help you.”
“I missed my chance. She was never alone. And now she has vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“She married a woodsman and disappeared.”
“Well, then. She is likely living on one of the more distant seigneuries if she has married a woodsman. They will come to town now and again, to sell their firewood.”
“No. I believe they have travelled upcountry to trade furs. Never to be seen again.”
“Oh Lili.” Marthe sighed. Her sister was seeing only darkness when there were shards of light everywhere. She need only turn towards the sun. “You don’t know that. Who is to say that she might not return home in the summer, when the fur fair starts up again?”
“She could be anywhere in a thousand forests. I am forever cursed.”
Marthe gave in and put her hands on top of élisabeth’s. “You will see her again. In the meantime, do not succumb to these bleak thoughts of possession—”
élisabeth leapt up, pushing back the stool so hard that it let out a screech as it scraped across the floor. “How can I not? You do not understand how much I suffer!”
Marthe was on her feet quickly, looking over her shoulder to see if the widow had heard them. She put a hand on élisabeth’s back, hoping to soothe her into silence. “Tell me, then. Tell me about your suffering. Quietly, though.”
“There must be a demon inside me. I know what you believe, Marthe, that I am not like the demoniac you and Nicolas saw. But what else can explain all of these sensations inside of me?” élisabeth’s voice was rising again.
“Do be quiet,” Marthe pleaded.
“On the ship I heard the old priest tell the captain what to watch for. He said fatigue was a sure sign of possession. You saw me, Marthe—I could not rise from my bunk for weeks!”
“You broke your crown, Lili.”