Chapter 20
Then they were alone, yoked together with as little notion of how they came to be bound to each other as a pair of dumb oxen.
élisabeth had been anxious to get to the chapel the moment they had signed the marriage contract—her marking an x on the parchment with two short, determined strokes, him writing his full name—Joseph Deschamps, known as Francoeur—but he had pushed back the wedding until he could finish the house.
He told her she would not be pleased if he brought her to a home without shutters.
The oiled paper he used for windowpanes would let the winter air in, chilling their bones and getting their married life off to a cold start.
When the moment was finally upon her, she pushed away all thoughts of Rémy and Marcosi, the two creatures that tormented her, and walked down the aisle.
Maman Poulin wept, Marthe pleaded with her not to leave it too long before she visited, and the other brides cheered as she left the chapel on her husband’s arm.
Now, trotting down to the river with her trunk balanced on his shoulders, she tried to steal a glance at her husband. The trousseau was large and blocked her view of his face.
“I thought the farm was to the east?” she asked. He shifted the trunk higher on his shoulders.
“It is. We are going down to the river to make the journey by canoe.”
“By canoe?”
“Why do you not walk on my other side so that I may see you?”
She hesitated, then dropped behind him to appear on his right. He was half a foot taller than she was, and with her white cloth cap pulled tightly around her face she had to turn her body fully to see his eyes. He gave her a smile.
“I am not such an ox that I can carry this trunk all the way to C?te Saint-Francois. We will travel in the dugout so that I am not spent by the time we arrive.”
“How far away is your farm?” she said after a moment.
“Our farm is a half hour downriver. Double that time on foot.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “Mother Bourgeoys told me you girls-for-marrying judge a man by his holdings, not his heart. Yet you have asked very little about our situation.”
élisabeth stared at the river before them. She could not think of anything else to ask about her new home. The demon inside her was yowling like a barn cat birthing kittens. He made so much noise that élisabeth was surprised her husband could not hear it.
“We do have a cow,” he continued when she did not speak. “In the winter when she gives no milk, I harness her to a sled to speed my travel, although she doesn’t like it.”
“Where do you travel to?”
“Here and there, up and down the c?te. Until the snow comes the river path is only passable on foot. The road is too uneven and rocky for a cart to make the journey.”
They reached the village dock. The dugout canoe was already loaded with a sack of flour, a gallon of lamp oil, and a new sickle and flail for next year’s harvest, all purchased on credit with her dowry.
There was only space left for her trunk and the two of them.
élisabeth blinked at all the wilted flowers tucked into the gunwales as Francoeur put her chest down.
“Next year I hope to purchase a bull, and one day before we are old, I hope we’ll own a horse and sleigh. I imagine our winters will then be full of visits not just with our neighbours, but old friends beyond our c?te too.”
“About our neighbours,” she began, seeing her chance. “How long does it take to get from your house to Jeanne Roy’s?”
“The wind has whipped your cheeks red raw. Do you have something warm to put on?”
For a moment she could not fathom what he was talking about, she was so anxious to plot her path to Jeanne Roy’s home. Then she remembered herself and knelt to open her trunk. She took out a woollen cloak and draped it around her shoulders.
“Does it button up, so that your hands are free to paddle?”
“Paddle?”
He gestured to the loaded craft. “It will be faster if we paddle together.”
She buttoned her mantle at the neck, then stood blinking at the canoe. “It looks like a… pea pod. Is it safe?”
He laughed. “It’s safe. The dugout is not as fine as a birchbark canoe, but I cannot afford one of those. Still, it’s a good deal more useful than a pea pod.” He knelt down and handed her one of the paddles. “You hold it here, and here. It’s not difficult, you’ll see.”
He reached for her arm to help her step into the hull. She was startled by his touch, and the wooden craft lurched back and forth. He gripped the gunwales to steady it.
“I see the wedding fairies have been decorating.” He smiled at the yellow flowers strewn around the boat as he leapt in after her.
He pushed off from the quay. “Like this,” he said, plunging the paddle into the river.
She turned to look over her shoulder, then clenched her jaw as the canoe swayed with her movement.
She gripped her paddle more tightly and dipped it into the water. “That’s it.”
It took several minutes for her to grow accustomed to paddling and she did not speak while she put her mind to the task. She did not want to appear incapable. He would come to realize how useless she was soon enough.
Once she had made peace with paddling, she turned to look back at him and tried again. “How far is Jeanne Roy’s house from yours?”
“Mere minutes through the woods. You’ll have plenty of days in her company this winter, I am sure. Though I don’t doubt at first we will find the duchess more often at our hearth than her own.”
“Why is that?” She did not need to ask why Francoeur called Jeanne Roy a duchess. The witch had clearly arrived in the c?te with the same haughty airs she had put on at the nun’s farmhouse and on the Saint-Jean-Baptiste.
“Grandbois is an adventurer, not a farmer. I convinced him to take a plot of land next to mine when we were decommissioned from the regiment. We built cabins, but they are only truly fit for animals. The floors are earthen, and the roofs are made of thatch. Last winter there were nights I thought I would freeze to death it was so cold. In the spring I set about as fast as I could to build myself a proper house. Grandbois did not. Jeanne is living in that old cabin.”
The air coming off the river was damp, and élisabeth’s hands were white with cold.
She wished they had bought some wool in the village before setting out, for she would need to knit a pair of mittens almost immediately.
She wondered what spells Jeanne Roy intended to employ to keep herself warm until springtime.
“I would like to see her as soon as possible,” élisabeth said finally. “First light tomorrow, if I may.”
“That’s a fine idea. I will come too and see if there is any service I might perform for her.”
“No,” élisabeth said, glancing over her shoulder at him. “I should go on my own. She will speak more freely to me, as a woman, and I shall determine whether she bears any resentment against Grandbois for leaving her in such harsh circumstances.”
“That’s an even better idea.” She heard nothing but the sound of the paddles in the water for several minutes, then Francoeur spoke again. “We are a good match, Lili. We work well together.”
She felt a stab of guilt. If Jeanne Roy could not cure her, Francoeur’s contentment would quickly desert him. She dipped her paddle into the river, thinking of how to respond.
“I was not accustomed to anyone but Marthe calling me Lili until we came here. It was her childhood name for me. She could not say élisabeth.” She lifted her arm to take another stroke and a splash of cold water soaked her sleeve. “How did you come by your regimental name?”
“I am told I have a sincere heart.”
She turned back to glance at him, to see if he was teasing. His face was solemn. “I expect you will now want me to call you by your Christian name.”
“No. Call me Francoeur.” There was a note of bitterness to his voice. “I do not even remember who the boy called Joseph Deschamps was.”
“Truly? You cannot tell me anything of your life before you joined the regiment?”
“We’re nearing our c?te.” He ignored her question and pointed to a house just visible from the water.
Smoke curled from the chimney and a dull glow came from behind the shutters.
“That house belongs to a man called Dufossé. He’s a curmudgeon, though I grant him allowances.
His wife had a child that died soon after it was born.
I’m sure a healthy son will soothe his ill temper. ”
“Did his wife survive her ordeal?”
“Yes, she is quite well. Though a quiet mouse. You will meet her soon enough. One day you will have children the same age, I don’t doubt.
” At the mention of the duty she owed her husband, the demon Marcosi slithered through her bowels, curling in a ball in the pit of her stomach.
“Our house will be the next we see, then a short ways after is Jeanne’s cabin. ”
They passed another stretch of unbroken forest. Dusk had descended on them; whatever sunshine had filtered through the clouds in the afternoon was long gone and they continued the last part of the journey in near darkness.
When they reached the shore of their own ribbon of land, Francoeur beached the canoe.
Once she had stepped out, he walked through to the bow and hauled the craft out of the water behind him.
“I had hoped to show you in daylight,” he said as he emptied the canoe of its goods. “There’s the house. Do you see? Next to it is the old cabin. I use it as a barn now for the cow and the chickens. The pig has already been slaughtered, though. I ran out of feed at the first frost.”