Chapter 28
Word had travelled around Ville-Marie that Father de Sancy hunted a witch in their midst, and the villagers had grown watchful and wary.
Now when Marthe fled the bakery in search of a moment’s peace from Barbe Poulin, she no longer met smiling housewives, newsmongers strolling the streets to engage in a little gossip.
She saw only the stern gazes of men who questioned why she was afoot alone.
Marthe reached the corner of Rue Saint-Paul and Rue Saint-Joseph.
Her feet were swollen and her back hurt.
She was not even seven months along, yet she felt like the whale that swallowed Jonah.
Marthe stopped, eyeing a nun outside the hospital door.
She could continue walking past the H?tel Dieu or she could cross the icy street and loop down to the river.
No, the Saint-Laurent was too far and she might run into the governor.
She seethed with frustration to be tethered such a short distance from her own hearth.
A ribbon of birds rose and twisted in the sky, the tail of the flock rippling into the afternoon sun.
Marthe watched them fly, thinking of the fat pigeons they should have for their dinner—if only she could pluck and truss the birds without Barbe Poulin commenting on the feathers she’d left on the breast. The ribbon arced and disappeared into the distance and Marthe felt a stab of despair. She wished she could fly away too.
A familiar figure crossed in front of the Place Royale and Marthe leapt at the diversion.
“Apolline!”
The older girl looked around and squinted into the sun. Marthe hiked up her skirts, and placing her foot in a patch of ice that had begun to melt, crossed the road.
“Look at the state of your shoes!” Apolline tutted. Marthe looked at her feet. How like Apolline to worry about mud on wooden clogs, as if a damp cloth wouldn’t make them right again in a moment.
“Don’t mind about my—”
“I wanted to catch you,” Apolline interrupted. “But we must speak privately. Come with me to Francoise’s home.” Without waiting for an answer, Apolline turned back in the direction she came from, towards Rue Saint-Gabriel. Marthe followed, intrigued.
“It’s been many weeks since you’ve been by the bakehouse,” Marthe said as Apolline turned off the main road.
“I do hope you are still enjoying our bread.” She chided herself for sounding so desperate.
Her husband had four hundred livres a year.
If she hadn’t spent months dreaming of fur-lined riches, perhaps she would not feel their circumstances were wanting.
But the widow had stolen her dreams, and now Marthe was set against both the widow and the fur trade.
“Yes, of course,” Apolline replied. “It’s nothing like what we had in Paris, but certainly better than I would have expected.
” She pushed open the door to the sabotier’s shop; it had been some time since Marthe had been to Francoise’s home.
She liked the bald cobbler her friend had married.
Though he was older than most of the husbands, he had crinkles around his eyes from too much smiling.
“Francoise!” Apolline called out, and after a moment, the girl emerged from the back, tiny Thérèse right behind her.
“Ooh, Marthe. You must not have long to go before you deliver your child,” Francoise said.
“I’ll thank you to know I have more than two months left,” Marthe said through gritted teeth. Francoise gave her a curious look and Marthe regretted letting her temper loose.
“I’m sorry. I know I am rather large. I wish…
I wish there was someone I could ask to be certain when I will deliver.
If I count nine months from my wedding night, it should be the middle of May…
” Marthe’s voice trailed off. She also wished Barbe Poulin would stop mentioning the size of her belly.
A thought occurred to her. “Apolline, perhaps I could ask your husband?”
“Blessed Virgin, don’t even think of it! Le Picard only attends a labouring mother when she’s near dead and the father wants the babe cut out of her belly. Though in most cases the child follows her straight to Heaven.”
“Oh,” Marthe said weakly, sparing a thought for what it must be like to be married to a surgeon.
Apolline’s husband’s wages must exceed that of a baker’s fivefold, but she didn’t envy her friend the screams from her husband’s patients when he pulled a tooth or cut off a limb.
“I wish… I wish I could ask Jeanne Roy.”
“That is what I need to discuss with you all,” Apolline said, craning past Francoise and Thérèse. “Is your husband home?” Francoise shook her head and Apolline continued. “There is to be a search party organized. One of Jeanne Roy’s neighbours has gone missing.”
“Do you mean Lili’s husband?” Marthe said. “He is away on business.”
“Of course not,” Apolline said. “The entire village whispers about the nature of Francoeur’s mission. This is someone else. I do not know the man.”
“What concern is it of ours?” Thérèse asked. “If a man has fallen into the river or been buried under a carpet of snow, spring will soon enough reveal what winter has done with him.”
“I worry…” Apolline started. “I worry that a man’s disappearance might be seen as strange, given the times.”
She did not need to say more. The village was on edge, seeking signs of sorcery everywhere.
Did Beno?t’s cow sicken and die because it was old and had not enough feed over winter, or was it the work of witchcraft?
Was Folleville’s oldest customer unable to lie with his wife because of drink, or had a spell been cast over his male member?
A missing man could not now simply be dismissed as winter taking its wage.
Not when he lived so near to Jeanne Roy.
“But Jeanne is not at home,” Marthe said suddenly. “She left in January to stay at the mission village at La Prairie. I spoke with her the day that she left with her Iroquois friend. She is likely across the river even now. She could have had nothing to do with her neighbour’s disappearance.”
Thérèse and Francoise exchanged a glance. “An Iroquois friend?”
Marthe nodded, thinking of how strange that seemed. The priests tried to convert the natives, and the nuns tried to educate them. But only Jeanne Roy tried to befriend them.
“My sister says that Jeanne Roy has a book of spells in her cabin. And all manner of devilish herbs. Not to mention that frightful doll. If the priest finds them—”
“She will burn,” Thérèse said, finishing Marthe’s thought.
Apolline drew a deep breath, and her face took on the look of prim self-assertion Marthe imagined she must have been born with.
“We cannot know if she brought her magical instruments with her when she left for the mission village. I propose that we travel to her c?te and rid the cabin of its effects. Bury them under the snow. Or cast them into the river.”
“What if someone should see us?” Francoise asked doubtfully.
“We shan’t be seen,” Apolline scolded her.
“I worry… I worry we will put ourselves at risk,” Thérèse said. “For someone who has not always looked so kindly upon us.”
Marthe looked closely at the other girls. Francoise’s cheeks were plump; Thérèse had the wan look of someone who had been sick all morning; and Apolline’s waistline had developed a small paunch.
“We must!” Marthe urged. “We have no choice. We shall all be in childbed before the summer is out and she is the only midwife on the island. And not just a midwife. A trained accoucheur.”
“A what?” Thérèse asked.
“I don’t really understand what that is,” Marthe admitted. “All I know is that we shall all be in need of her magic soon enough.”
“How long does it take to get to her c?te?” Apolline asked.
“My sister says it’s little more than an hour’s walk.”
“The days are getting longer,” she said. “If we leave now, we can be back before nightfall.”
“I shall run back to the bakery,” Marthe said. “We shall be in need of food on our journey, even if we are only gone a few hours.”
“Will it be safe to walk so far out of the village?” Thérèse asked, meaning: Might the Iroquois capture them? There was always a risk that a hunting party might breach the peace. But between a rogue attack and facing childbirth alone, Marthe knew which she feared the most.
“Recite your rosary and beg for Saint Anne to protect us,” she said, wishing there were more they could do.
Marthe hurried back to the bakehouse. If the man was missing, Jeanne might be blamed. She shuddered, and not from the cold. As much as she was drawn to magic, the idea of searching through the hedge witch’s hut for enchanted tools frightened her a little bit.
She threw open the door to the bakery and made straight for the front room to collect some bread.
For once she was thankful her husband slept all morning.
She would be gone before he woke. She crammed two loaves into her bag and was turning to leave when she was startled by the sight of her sister standing silently in the doorway. Marthe let out a gasp.
“You startled me!”
“Where are you going?” élisabeth asked.
“To deliver some bread.”
“I thought all the orders had gone out. Maman Poulin took the regulars not half an hour ago.”
“Well, she left one order behind.”
élisabeth frowned. “Marthe, I know how you like to walk about but it’s not safe with a witch on the prowl.”
“You know as well as I do that the witch they seek is Jeanne Roy. And we have nothing to fear from her.” Marthe spoke with more confidence than she felt.
élisabeth glowered. “She’s never done anything to help me.”
Marthe hesitated. She did not know whom to believe.
élisabeth, who was desperate for Jeanne to rid her of her demon, or Jeanne, who wanted to prick her sister’s arm with a lancet to drain her black bile.
Marthe felt if only she could sit them down and make them talk to each other they might come to some kind of understanding. She decided to confess.
“Lili, truth be told, I am going to Jeanne Roy’s cabin with Apolline and the other girls.
One of your neighbours has gone missing.
It won’t be long before a search party goes to your c?te.
And who knows what magical objects and charms Jeanne has hidden in her cabin.
If anyone finds them…” Marthe’s voice trailed off.
“Which neighbour?” élisabeth asked.
“I don’t know. Apolline did not say.”
élisabeth twisted her hands in front of her, lost in contemplation.
Suddenly she looked up. “I will join you,” she said.
“If Father de Sancy is right and Jeanne Roy is in possession of Chamberlen’s Secret, we must look for it in her cabin.
After all, it might… it might be the tool I need to banish the demon. ”
Marthe hesitated. The village was abuzz with gossip about the magic wand that was said to give the witch her power.
She knew from her visit to the fort that Governor de Lafredière also wanted to find it.
Perhaps someone other than a witch could figure out how to use it.
But after what Jeanne Roy had said about élisabeth’s condition, Marthe wasn’t certain that a magic wand was the cure her sister needed after all.
“I can’t imagine Jeanne would have left Chamberlen’s Secret behind, if it is so powerful,” Marthe said. “Still, I would be grateful if you joined us.”
She gave her sister a shy smile. élisabeth smiled back, and Marthe’s heart lifted.
Perhaps a long walk would do them both good.
She reached for her blanket coat from the peg by the door and belted it around her waist. She handed élisabeth her own coat, just as the door flew open. Barbe Poulin stepped inside.
“Where are you two going?” the widow asked. The look on her face indicated she was not pleased. “Marthe, have you plucked the birds for our supper yet?”
Marthe glanced back at the pair of pigeons on the table. They lay limp, trussed by the legs. She thought of the ribbon of birds she had seen earlier, rippling and waving as they disappeared over the horizon. Her frustration was so great she wanted to break into a sob.
“Maman Poulin, we are obliged to journey to my home this morning,” élisabeth said suddenly. “I’ve had word from a person who walked by the house that a shutter has come loose.”
“Oh no,” Barbe Poulin said, her concern knit across her forehead. “You mustn’t let a loose shutter flap in the wind. It could damage the frame.”
“Precisely,” élisabeth said. “So we have decided to make a day of it, Marthe and I, along with some of our sisters from the ship. We will be back before nightfall.”
Marthe marvelled at élisabeth’s smooth lie. Though what Barbe Poulin said next made her heart sink.
“What an idea! I shall join you.”