Chapter 22 #3
“She lays curses on beautiful girls because she is jealous of their youth and wants it for herself. Rémy said that she wanted me because I am quite pretty…” élisabeth paused, aware of sounding boastful.
“But do not think me so vain as to believe that. I have since wondered if it wasn’t Madame Delaunay who caused the witch to come for me.
She was always suspicious of her son’s affection for me.
I believe it was she who encouraged the cook to keep us apart.
Old Geneviève was forever telling me to stay away from Rémy. ”
“And what happened to the woman after she was pushed out the door?” Jeanne Roy’s voice was tight, as if she could not breathe. “You said your lover could not find her?”
“No. She was gone with the frost in the morning. It’s what she’s done for a hundred years, and she could go on like that for a hundred more.
Until she is killed, I can never, ever bear children.
I had thought I could lift the curse by coming to Ville-Marie, but I was wrong.
I can never bear children, unless you, Jeanne, can break the curse. ”
“Me? What part do I play in this fantasy?”
A spark escaped from a crackling log, falling at their feet. The witch snuffed the cinder out with her heel. élisabeth took a deep breath to force the keening demon down. She sank to her knees, her hands clasped together.
“I know you are a far more powerful and accomplished sorceress than the Winter Witch of Saint-Philbert. I saw what you did when the ship was in danger of sinking. And you magicked my letter of good conduct out of my hand! I’ve seen you swim like a mermaid in the sea.
Please, for pity’s sake, you must have a spell that can counter the curse that afflicts me. ”
For a moment there was only silence and the crackling of Jeanne Roy’s meagre fire. Then came a noise so startling it nearly knocked élisabeth backwards. It was a cackle as dry as the bark on the outside of Jeanne Roy’s hut and just as brittle. The witch was laughing.
Jeanne Roy shook her head. “I cannot begin to think what to say to you.”
“Say anything. Please. I spoke to Father de Sancy. He said the demon is a great marquis of Hell. Marcosi is a wolf with a serpent’s tail and gryphon’s wings. He will fester inside of me until I no longer know myself. Perhaps… perhaps the demon shall turn me into a wolf with wings myself!”
Suddenly the witch looked weary. She stopped laughing.
“You will not become a wolf with wings, élisabeth.”
“I might. Maman Poulin says werewolves—”
“No. You won’t. You are a harebrained fool who has listened to too many stories and who has chosen to believe them without a shred of reason or common sense. There is nothing I can do to help you.”
élisabeth could hardly understand what she was saying.
“I am cursed. This is not a story. A demon lives inside of me. How else can you explain everything that has happened to me?” She stood up; Marcosi was agitated by the witch’s disdain and roiled her guts.
“Very simply.” The witch stared at her evenly. “Consider for a moment that witches and demons are not real.”
“They are real. As real as the trees outside. As real as God.”
“So you say—”
“It’s not me who says so. It’s Father de Sancy. It’s the church! Do you deny God’s truth?”
“Consider, just consider, that witchcraft does not exist. Magic is not real. Let us think of what other reason there might be for everything that has happened to you—”
“Nothing can explain why I lost a child that had already quickened! Nothing can explain why my guts churn like there’s a monster inside me, or why I can’t ever catch a full breath of air.
There is a demon in my body, put there by a witch,” élisabeth said, her voice cracking, unable to hold back her tears.
“Many women miscarry, even after the quickening. It is not an act of witchcraft to lose a child. You are more than likely perfectly able to have another.”
élisabeth spluttered. “The Winter Witch pointed her finger at me! An old crone never seen in the village except in the darkest time of year, stumbles into the tavern and screams at me, a girl she does not know? Why would she point at me?”
“Perhaps she is afflicted with madness. Perhaps she only comes into your village in February because the wood she has carefully gathered all year has run out and it is cold and she is starving and begging for help to survive until the spring.”
élisabeth flushed. “She did not beg for help. She pointed and screamed ’twas for you.”
“Maybe she was trying to warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
“Let us consider a new notion. Firstly, let us consider that witches are not real. They do not exist. I suggest the woman is a mad beggar, deserving of our pity. You say that doesn’t explain her behaviour entirely.
Fine. Let us gather the evidence. You are an unmarried servant engaged in fornication with your mistress’s son.
No, wait, don’t be angry. Is this not a fair and true assessment of your situation? ”
élisabeth glared at Jeanne Roy. The demon flicked his tail, his annoyance mounting. The witch stared down her long nose at her and continued.
“The boy led you to believe that by conceiving a child you would force his parents’ hand into allowing you to marry.
The cook in the household suspects as much and warns you against the boy.
You take no heed of that warning. Eventually you do conceive, and you let him know of it.
He promises to tell his parents, yet he does not hurry to do so. ”
“That’s not fair—”
Jeanne Roy waved away élisabeth’s protest. “Next, he asks you to meet, not at his parents’ home, but at the tavern.
He encourages you to partake of wine so sour that it is unpleasant to drink.
Then a woman enters the tavern in a state of distress.
Something has alarmed her. The boy is also fearful, almost terrified of her presence.
He rushes forward and pays her a princely sum of money, a whole silver écu, and pushes her out the door.
Then he arranges for you to slip out the back, making sure you do not meet the old woman again, lest perhaps she explain herself.
After that your lover announces that you will never have another child because of a curse and he’s done with you. ”
The cold-blooded manner in which Jeanne Roy spoke felt like a box to the ears. élisabeth stood, staring at the velvet witch, full of hatred. Still Jeanne continued her tirade.
“Those are the facts. But we still have questions.
For instance, why was your wine so strangely bitter?
Had the barrel gone off and made you sick to the point of losing the child?
Or is it possible—and I am only suggesting this as an idea to be considered—that Rémy poisoned your drink to make you miscarry?
Had he grown tired of you? Had he come up with a way to be rid of that which bound him to you?
“And that night in the tavern, did the old woman see you and realize that the boy never intended to use the poison draught he bought from her on rats or cats or whatever he had told her? Did she see him slip it into your drink from the window? Was she dismayed and tried to warn you—’twas for you!
—only to be attacked and pushed out the door by the man who said he would protect you? ”
The demon was screeching in élisabeth’s ears. Jeanne Roy was pitiless, she would not stop. élisabeth wanted to kick her right into the fire.
“That’s… not… true.”
“Perhaps not. It’s possible that you miscarried because the baby was not meant to live.
It’s possible that you feel possessed by a demon because you have been hysterical with grief since you lost your child or gripped with shame for your acts of fornication.
It is possible that you suffer from melancholy due to an imbalance of the biles in your body.
Any of these are better theories than that of a witch bearing a grudge against your beauty coming into a tavern to lay a curse on you.
That’s the dull-witted thinking of a peasant.
And that, I am afraid, is the only real curse you bear. ”
élisabeth clenched her fists to stop her body from trembling, striking them against her own hips.
She seethed. Jeanne Roy was not only a witch, but a thief and a liar.
A lying witch who refused to help her. Tears blurred her eyes, and instead of Jeanne Roy in front of her she saw the Winter Witch, cursing and taunting and thwarting her.
She could no longer keep the demon down.
When she spoke next it was with Marcosi’s forked tongue.
“I have a few notions about you, Jeanne Roy, or whatever your name is. Would you like to hear them?”
The witch crossed her arms. “I am certain to be amused.”
“You were not meant to be on that ship. You had no trunk. No letter of good conduct. You snuck on board as a stowaway because you are one of the Norman witches that Father de Sancy hunts.”
“Can you prove it?”
“No, not until I discover your real name and see if it is the same as that of the witch queen that Father de Sancy seeks. For your name is not Jeanne, that is for certain. And Roy? King? It’s so obvious now. The king saved you from the stake and so you took his name.”
Jeanne Roy’s eyes glittered like ice. “And what if I am one of those falsely accused women from Rouen? Those women of learning, or desperation, or both. I have served my sentence. I have left France—banished as the king decreed—to live my life in exile. Father de Sancy has no cause to arrest me.”
“Unless you are accused of witchcraft again,” the demon said quietly.
“Do not threaten me, élisabeth,” Jeanne Roy snapped. “I am not the only one who owns a scandalous past.”
“Then help me be rid of this curse,” élisabeth cried, sinking to her knees again. “Why won’t you help me? I will keep your secret, and once I am cured you will never hear from me again.”
“The only thing you need curing of is stupidity, and I have no herbs or tinctures for that,” Jeanne spat.
A strangled cry burst from élisabeth’s lips. “You have potions. I can see them, there! And there’s a book of spells on your table. You are a witch! Why won’t you use your power to help me?”
“I am not a witch! That is no grimoire! That is my journal. I am a student of science. I have trained with the greatest accoucheurs in Europe. I have studied midwifery and medicine in Paris—I have done what no other woman has done. I will not be thwarted by a fool with a grudge. Not again.”
Jeanne Roy laid her hands on élisabeth’s shoulders and pushed her out of her hut. She stumbled outside, wide-eyed and gasping as the witch slammed the door shut.
“Jeanne! Let me in,” she cried, banging on the door.
There was no sound from within. élisabeth took a step back and looked wildly around.
The demon Marcosi, spared execution, began to chuckle.
She stumbled away from the cabin, started to make her way through the woods, but the branches of the bare trees grasped for her.
She ran, jagged as a hare, too overcome with despair to relinquish any speed, too distraught to shield her face from scratching twigs.
It could not be true. It could not be.
For if witchcraft did not exist, then every choice she had ever made since the night in the tavern was without purpose, or reason.