Chapter 24
“They’ve been baked too long, they’re burnt on the bottom,” Marthe said dully, examining each loaf of bread as she laid it into the shop baskets. “We won’t be able to charge full price.”
Verger shrugged in a way that set her teeth on edge: an insouciant gesture of both submission and idleness. “Just adds flavour, Old Poulin used to say.”
Marthe kept her eyes on the bread, stifling her rage. “Well, they’re also flatter than usual, so you’re doing something wrong.”
Verger did not answer, which was somehow worse than a shrug.
“Did you hear me? The loaves are over-risen. I do not know how you can claim to be a master baker when your bread is so irregular.”
“If you will not let me be master of the one thing that I should, then what do you expect?”
The sound of her husband’s fist on the table brought a smile to her lips. For weeks, she had been angry. All she wanted was to scream, slam doors, and beat her fists against the wall. She hoped her amiable husband would give her cause to do so.
Turning towards him, Marthe glowered and touched her neck.
After the attack, her bruises had turned the colour of rotting dandelions, a chain of decaying flowers stretched from her nape to her throat.
In the presence of customers and Barbe Poulin, she’d hidden them with a scarf and complained loudly of the cold to cover her shame.
Only Verger had seen the extent of her injuries.
Verger, who had a childish notion that he might challenge the governor of Montréal over what he’d done.
“You, master of my honour? Please,” she sneered.
In her heart she knew she was being unfair.
But her fury burned with such heat it made her reckless.
She did not understand why she was so angry, only that her anger made her cruel.
“If you so much as tread near the fort our bakery will be shut down within a sennight.”
“And yet you appeal to your brother-in-law, with no fear of the repercussions for his livelihood?” Verger shot back.
“That was not my doing—Jambon and Lajeunesse said Francoeur would know what to do. They said he has dealt a blow to Lafredière in the past.” She paused, wanting her next words to bite. “And I trust them to solve this matter more than you.”
She watched as her husband’s slim frame caved in defeat.
His fist was still on the table, though now it grew slack, lying impotently against the wood.
He gave her a long look and pointedly raised his shoulders to his ears and down again.
She wanted to grab a loaf of bread and hammer him over the head.
Instead, she turned back to her baskets and listened for the slam of the door as Verger left for the tavern.
She tried to steady her breathing. She could not blame her husband; what had happened was not his fault.
But her temper—always her greatest sin, her sister said—was like nothing she had ever known before.
She could not sleep for the fury that crackled inside of her, burning all day and all night.
It was so blinding she wondered if the demon that inhabited élisabeth dwelt in her heart as well.
She heard the door and felt herself soften. When she was not enraged, she was close to tears. She turned, ready to run into Verger’s arms. She would forgive him, though of course there was nothing to forgive.
“Good day, Marthe.”
Marthe halted, taking in the sight before her.
It was Jeanne Roy, her cheeks ruddy and her eyes bright.
She wore a native-style woollen blanket coat, belted at the waist, underneath which Marthe could see a pair of tall moose-hide boots.
The snowflakes caught in her hair glittered like starlight.
Marthe was so astonished she sank into a deep curtsey.
“Whatever are you doing? I am not your better.” Jeanne Roy laughed, stepping into the room. “At least not in this country. May I present my friend Wari?”
Marthe noticed a native woman standing behind the witch.
Again, she fell into a curtsey, not knowing how else to greet the stranger.
The woman was dressed the same as Jeanne Roy, but with an intricately beaded bag over her shoulder and long black braids hanging below her cap.
She leaned two pairs of snowshoes against the wall as she came in.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” Marthe stammered, then checked her rudeness. It would not do to anger Jeanne Roy, who held élisabeth’s fate in her hands. “May I offer you a drink?”
“We have come to buy bread,” Jeanne Roy smiled. “This is a bakehouse, is it not?” There was a faint trace of imperiousness in her voice that Marthe did not like, but she did not show it. She bobbed her head.
“Of course, of course, you must have come from some distance.” Marthe glanced at the snowshoes. “Please sit and take some small beer with me.”
The women arranged themselves around Barbe Poulin’s table; Marthe was relieved that the widow had gone out on some errand she would not reveal. She poured spruce beer into pewter mugs and sat down.
“What brings you to town to buy your bread?” Marthe asked. She wasn’t sure if she could enquire after élisabeth’s health in front of the native woman. She did not know how much the stranger knew about Jeanne’s magic.
“I am on my way to spend the winter with Wari at the mission village across the river at La Prairie,” Jeanne said, her eyes shining. “I will live in a longhouse with her and other Oneida and Agniers until the spring comes.”
Marthe blinked at the pair sitting opposite her.
She could not imagine living among the natives in a longhouse—whatever a longhouse was—though a year ago she could not have imagined a native and a noblewoman sharing her table.
Her heart lifted for the first time in weeks.
This experience was a richness of a sort.
“Will your family mind Jeanne staying with you for so long?” Marthe asked Wari, thinking of the widow crusted onto the hull of her own home.
The Agnier woman did not move. “The small pox killed my family.”
“Oh.” Marthe’s face fell.
“My home is now with the other Haudenosaunee at the Jesuit mission. Others who have converted to your faith.” Wari folded her hands in her lap. She spoke French well, with a lilting accent. Marthe could not help staring at her.
“And why… why did you become a Christian?” She knew from Jeanne Roy’s sharp look that her question was impolite, but she could not contain her curiosity.
“Five years ago, French soldiers burned our villages and our crops.” Wari fixed her eyes on Marthe.
“When peace came, so did the black robes. They spoke of safety in a place along the river. They said we could worship God freely there. I wanted a place where I could sell my herbs and be free to trade medicine with your people.” The Agnier woman nodded at Jeanne.
“That’s why I became a Christian. For safety. ”
An image of the governor’s bulging eye flashed into Marthe’s head. She put her fingertips on her throat and gently rubbed the skin where he had grabbed her. Wari was wrong to seek safety on this island.
“This is a town full of wolves,” Marthe said bitterly. “None of us is safe amongst these men.”
“You speak too rashly,” Wari replied. “There are good men and bad men, just as there are good and bad women. In all things, there is balance.”
Marthe paused, trying to find fault with the woman’s words.
But in her heart she knew her husband was a good man, nothing like Lafredière or the customer who had struck his wife in the bakery for daring to want a finer loaf.
Her father had been a good man too. Marthe pictured Papa, sitting down at the table with his children all around him, laughing as they spoke over each other to be the first to tell him all that had happened during the day.
Her fingers slowly pinched the flesh on her neck as she thought about Papa slumped in the same chair where he ate his cheese and bread, his blood spilling over the rim of the small clay cup and onto the floor. A good man, gone too soon.
“Then I will pray for safety,” she whispered. “For my family as well as yours.”
The native woman nodded. “I will pray for you too, and for Angélique.”
“Your child must be kicking by now.” Jeanne Roy turned abruptly to Marthe, her tone brusque.
“Why, yes,” Marthe said, bewildered by the shift in the conversation.
She did not know who Angélique was, and there was more she wanted to ask Wari.
But she longed for the sorceress’s advice, and so she turned to Jeanne and shared her deepest fears.
“I sometimes worry I will not survive my time in childbed.”
Jeanne nodded. “Every woman worries. I have helped girls in worse circumstances than you give birth to healthy children.”
Marthe’s ears perked up.
“You’re a midwife?” It made sense; most midwives had a bit of magic in them. Though they were almost always mothers or grandmothers themselves. “Do you have children of your own?” she asked.
“No.” Jeanne Roy’s tone was sharp. “I studied in Paris with one of the greatest accoucheurs in Europe.”
“Accoucheurs?” Marthe’s nose wrinkled.
“Man-midwives you might call them. It’s quite common now for well-born ladies to have one attend to them in their labours.”
Marthe rolled her eyes. “A man-midwife? I expect they’d be just like Verger, talking about sows and piglets, nary a clue what it is to carry a pumpkin around inside for months.”
Jeanne Roy smiled. “It’s true. Most men don’t know a baby’s head from a melon. But the man-midwives are different; they are highly skilled. One of the best in France taught me all he knows.”
“Why would any woman want a man to assist her while she is labouring?” Marthe asked. “Is it not shameful for a man to see a woman in her confinement?”