Chapter 23
A dropped spoon is a sure sign of visitors coming, and if it falls face down, they’ll be bringing bad tidings. élisabeth looked at the back of the wooden spoon on the floor and the pork dripping spattered across the pine boards. She braced herself for the worst.
The sky was the same colour as the snow on the ground, a bruised white that made it difficult to tell where the horizon began and ended.
The visitors’ red woollen hats made them visible on the river path long before their ox-drawn sled pulled up to the house.
One very tall, one short and barrel-chested, she recognized the grim faces of the two Carignan-Salières soldiers who had married Rose and Lou.
élisabeth wondered how bad the news would be.
In her womb, the demon Marcosi sat up on his hind legs, ears flat against his head, and waited.
They had had visitors enough in the two months since she had been wed, but the untamed demon inside her had made it impossible for her to exchange anything more than greetings with the well-intentioned neighbours who had come to call.
In the first weeks of her marriage, she had curtseyed and said good day to a dozen of them, but with Marcosi strutting around unfettered as a cockerel after Jeanne Roy’s rejection, élisabeth was tongue-tied and awkward.
Jeanne’s voice tormented her still, as sure as if her words were shards of glass stuck in her palm.
Consider, just consider, that witchcraft does not exist.
Is it possible that Rémy poisoned your drink to make you miscarry?
Had he come up with a way to be rid of that which bound him to you?
She could neither join in the neighbours’ admiration of the crucifix Francoeur had newly hung above their hearth, nor weigh their advice about storing straw in the rafters and putting aside salted fish and peas in the cellar.
She could not unstick herself from her own thoughts, and soon enough the visitors stopped coming, amid whispers that élisabeth was odd, or at the very least dull, and quite likely simple.
Her husband was undeterred. He had insisted she would find companionship among the wives living in C?te Saint-Francois.
At first, he had suggested Jeanne Roy come to dine, but when élisabeth blanched and begged Francoeur not to invite her into their home, he retreated.
Then on Saint Martin’s Day he brought her with him to pay the rents.
The Sulpicians did not have a manor house in the seigneurie, so the habitants met their landlords at one of the neighbour’s houses.
élisabeth thought the man called Dufossé boorish, and his wife, Hélène, an unfortunate creature ducking and cringing at her husband’s every glance.
The only moment of kinship élisabeth felt with the woman was when they realized that they had travelled to New France on the same ship, a few years apart.
Finding her tongue, élisabeth mumbled, “I suffered the entire journey.”
“When we set sail, I was convinced we would all die,” Hélène replied. “I jumped overboard, thinking it was better to drown close to Dieppe than out in the ocean, for at least near shore they might recover my body rather than leave me to be taken by sea monsters. One of the sailors rescued me.”
“You’re the mermaid!” élisabeth exclaimed, drawing the attention of the other neighbours.
She was forced to explain that she had heard the story of a girl who jumped into the sea from the sailor who rescued her, and how he thought of her as his mermaid still.
Dufossé stepped in to jeer at his wife and told everyone assembled that she was a mooncalf, not a mermaid.
Hélène hunched her shoulders, closing in upon herself, and the men continued their talk of how to convince the seigneurs of the need to build a grist mill.
Once their backs were turned, she took a step closer to élisabeth.
“You met Michel?”
“Yes,” élisabeth nodded. “And I believe he must be in love with you, for he left the ship in Québec to search for you. He has a notion you might be a widow and free to marry him.”
“He loves me still?” Hélène’s eyes had widened.
élisabeth had looked at her pale face, thinking what it would be like to have a friend in the lonely stretch of near-unbroken forest she now called home.
She and this woman might meet again at her table and share stories of the lovers they left behind.
Then élisabeth thought of Rémy. Had he tired of her, as Jeanne Roy said?
Thrown her away, like an apple core for the pigs?
If so, why? He said she had too many freckles, was that the reason?
She should have scrubbed her face with apple cider and honey.
She agonized over what she had done wrong and fell headlong into silence.
After that, Hélène had retreated, shrinking further into herself until she became so invisible that no one seemed to notice her sitting alone by the hearth, staring into the fire.
Francoeur soon gave up trying to foist companionship upon her, and she and Marcosi were left alone. Until the spoon slipped through her hand on the morning of Epiphany, and she knew something was about to change.
The two old soldiers stomped their feet at the door, letting thick chunks of snow fall from their boots.
“élisabeth, what can we offer our guests?” Francoeur said. He had no foreboding; he seemed delighted by their unexpected company, eagerly taking his comrades’ coats to hang them on pegs by the door.
“There’s spruce beer. Or the blueberry wine.”
“Good Lord, no!” Short, stocky Jambon smacked his palm to his forehead. “Mistress, has he tried to make you drink the blue vinegar?”
The one with the baby face who had married Rose chuckled. “He bought it from a pretty maid at market,” Lajeunesse said. “He never manages to finish a bottle, yet he always goes back for more.”
“Now lads, you’ll land me in trouble with my wife,” Francoeur said hastily. “She is the most beautiful woman on this island. Although she pretends she’s only passably pretty.”
He tried to catch her eye so that she might share in their private joke, but élisabeth looked at the floor. Why could she not smile back? Laugh at his little joke, touch his shoulder when he passed by, draw him close to her at night, as Marcosi urged her to do?
No, no, no. If the witch would not help her, she would fight the demon by not giving into sin. She must be as pious as the Holy Virgin. It was the only way to keep the demon down.
Consider, just consider, that witchcraft does not exist.
Impossible. If witches did not exist and magic was nothing more than wishes, then she was neither cursed nor barren.
If the Winter Witch were merely an old woman looking for firewood, then élisabeth could have stayed in Saint-Philbert and accused Rémy of seduction.
The courts might have forced him to marry her.
If witchcraft did not exist and Rémy was a liar, then he was not her true love.
She had thrown her life away for nothing.
If witchcraft did not exist, she could lay with her husband without sin.
Stupid, ignorant peasant. Harebrained fool.
Jeanne Roy’s words were as poisonous as an adder’s bite.
Who was she to call élisabeth stupid? She might not be able to read or write her name, but which of them was living in a warm house with an able husband, and which of them was living alone in a hut made from little more than brambles?
She felt Marcosi stretch and dig his sharpened claws deep into her belly.
She grimaced. The ache inside of her was all the proof she needed.
What else could explain her gut-wrenching spasms if demons did not exist?
No, she was not stupid or harebrained. Witches were real. Demons walked among them.
She knew it for certain, for she lived with one every day.
“Give us the blue vinegar, then. We shall drink a toast to our wives.” Jambon clapped his hand on Francoeur’s shoulder, bringing élisabeth out of her thoughts. She stepped away to fetch the wine.
“My friend, we have come to you for your counsel,” Jambon said. “I am sorry to say we have bad news about Lafredière.”
élisabeth poured the blueberry wine into tin mugs and placed one in front of each of the men. Francoeur placed his forearms on the table, staring straight at Jambon.
“What’s he done now?”
Jambon looked at élisabeth uneasily. “He attacked one of the village wives.”
“Tell me.” The words shot out of Francoeur’s mouth.
“Lafredière fell upon her and choked her until she nearly lost breath. It happened a few months back. We only learned of it when we went into town to sell firewood a few days ago.”
“Who?” élisabeth asked warily. “Who did he attack?”
Jambon swallowed and glanced at élisabeth again. “I was told to keep the woman’s name to myself. She does not want to bring shame upon her household.”
Francoeur kept his eyes fixed on Jambon and nodded. “Was she badly hurt?”
“Her neck was bruised, but he did not break any bones.”
élisabeth felt the demon rake along her spine, its tail knocking against every bone. She took a step back from the men to hide her shudder.
“That’s not all,” Jambon added, leaning across the table towards Francoeur. “Lafred’s slaves have gone missing. The two Panis girls. He claims they’ve run away. Only, after what happened in New York, we did wonder…”
Francoeur sat quietly, digesting what Jambon said. His fingertips traced the grain in the wooden table; the skin around his eyes was tight, as if he were wincing.
“What happened in New York?” élisabeth asked. Her husband ran his hands over the edge of the table, measuring something in his mind. He did not look at her.
“So we came to you, of course,” Jambon continued. “We have to stop him. Once and for all.”
The muscle in Francoeur’s jaw twitched. “You don’t need me. You could have alerted the authorities yourselves.”
“Lafredière is the authority in Ville-Marie.”
“The church, then.”