Chapter 29
They collected the other Saint-Jean-Baptiste girls from the clog maker’s shop and walked along the river path on the edge of the forest. The day before, a dreary sleet had fallen unlike any élisabeth had ever known in Normandy, a cold rain that had frozen when it hit the ground, lacquering the house and trees with a glaze of hard ice.
The landscape looked like it had been coated in whipped egg whites.
élisabeth wished she had brought the snowshoes her husband had purchased from the Algonquins; they would have helped her balance on the icy path.
Still, Maman Poulin was merry company, telling the girls everything she knew about those who dwelled in the houses they passed.
The long, thin ribbon farms ran down to the river, each with its own stretch of waterfront, so they had occasion to cross dozens of homesteads.
Several times along the way the widow stopped to talk to the habitants as they rushed out of their homes and down to the river to greet them.
On the first occasion, Marthe whispered her plan to the others: that she, Thérèse, and Francoise would forge on towards Jeanne’s cabin, while élisabeth and Apolline tarried behind to keep the widow distracted.
élisabeth muttered that Marthe would not know her house, let alone the witch’s hut, but Marthe said from all she had been told she would not mistake it.
Before élisabeth could protest further, the widow had drawn her over to greet a habitant and his wife.
Marthe and the two others stole away, growing smaller and smaller in the distance; when the widow called out for them to cool their heels, it was too late. They were gone.
“Now this is a sorry home,” Maman Poulin told Apolline when they finally reached the western edge of élisabeth’s c?te. “Dufossé and his wife rarely come into the village. Hélène lost a child soon after she delivered it, and I don’t think he has ever forgiven her. I say we stop and pay her a visit.”
“Oh Maman, I worry that we won’t get back before nightfall,” élisabeth said, glancing at Apolline. “We have stopped so often already.”
“We must. A baker’s wife keeps a village’s secrets at her breast, and I know enough about this pair to insist that we look in on them.”
“Pray, let me travel on ahead,” élisabeth begged.
She had no desire to see her mouse of a neighbour Hélène in her misery.
“I will tie up the broken shutter, and when you reach my door, I will have the fire started and we may eat our bread and cheese at my table. I am sure that Marthe and the others are already there.”
The widow was like a general: she did not like her troops to move without her command, and she had already lost half her company. Her face rumpled at the mutiny she faced.
“Do not fear, Maman Poulin,” Apolline broke in. “I will see élisabeth safely to her door. You look in on the poor, childless mother and we shall see you within the hour.”
They took their leave of the widow and walked eastwards as quickly as they could.
“I will forge on to Jeanne’s cabin to help the others,” Apolline said as they neared élisabeth’s house. She stifled a shriek as her boots slipped on the ice. “Can you make a show of having mended a broken shutter?”
“Don’t worry about me. You go on and find the others. And Apolline? Keep your eye out for Chamberlen’s Secret. If you see it, whatever it is, do everything in your power to keep it safe.”
élisabeth showed Apolline the path through the woods where she would find the witch’s hut and then turned to open the door to her home.
Inside, it was so cold she thought no amount of firewood could ever warm its wooden bones.
She looked around the room. She had forgotten how perfect her home was.
How the door fitted smoothly in its jamb.
How the backs of the newly built chairs curved gracefully.
Francoeur had sanded them over the course of the month of December, and he had promised to build more when their children came and claimed a place at the table.
élisabeth’s gaze fell on the straw mattress, lying plumped and waiting on the floor.
The mattress where she had let him believe that her piety and fear stopped her from lying with him, when all the while she had longed to feel his calloused hands on her body. Like a wolf on a rabbit, as Maman Poulin said.
Yet the grace of the sacrament of marriage came from its fertility, and she knew from the feeling of the demon sharpening its claws on her womb that she was still barren. Without children, their marriage bed would have been a pit of sin.
Consider, consider. Witchcraft does not exist.
élisabeth crossed the room, sweeping her hands across the hearth to try to locate the tinder in the dim light. What if Jeanne Roy was right? What if witches were not real? But if that were so, why had she lost her baby?
Rémy wanted to be rid of you, that’s why.
She tried to ignore the demon’s taunts, but she could not help but think of her lover: Rémy with his wiry frame and feline appetite, pouncing on her day after day, pawing at her stays as if she were a doll for him to undress. She found the tinder and clutched it in her fist.
She must have been mad to think herself in love with him. She must have been a fool to believe they would marry.
She dropped to her knees to build the fire and saw there was barely enough kindling to catch, and not a log left inside to burn. She would have to bring some in from the woodpile. The woodpile Francoeur had carefully cut and stacked before the onset of winter.
All around her it was plain what she needed.
Francoeur, who had built a home for her with his bare hands.
Francoeur, with shoulders so broad and arms so strong she ached when he changed his shirt, giving her a glimpse of his bare chest.
Francoeur, who had left her.
élisabeth did not have time for tears; the widow would be upon her soon.
She rose and made for the door, stepping outside and slipping on the slick ground as she made her way to the woodpile.
It too was covered in a layer of ice. She ran her hands over the wood but could not pry a single log free from the pile.
“Hell’s teeth,” she muttered, kicking a frozen log and immediately feeling a stab of pain in her toes.
She clamped her mouth shut so that Marcosi could not slip out on a string of curses.
She turned towards the cowshed. Her husband had stored enough wood for the entire winter in the shed, cords and cords of it cut down from the back of their farm.
Her boots skidded on the ice as she shuffled over to the meagre cabin, the same as all the settlers had erected when they first arrived: thin trees bound together with wattle and daub.
She reached the door and saw to her dismay that it was barricaded by a drift of snow.
“Blessed Virgin, give me strength.” She kicked at it and found that once the crust of ice had been broken, the snow underneath was soft enough to be pushed aside with her foot. She cleared enough to open the door a few inches and squeezed inside the shed.
She blinked, adjusting to the dim light, aware of shapes in the darkness around her. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them wide again.
There, on top of the woodpile: a man, sitting.
élisabeth screamed. She stumbled back to the door. She grabbed it and pushed frantically against the snow to be let out. The door caught on the drift on the other side. She looked back.
His skin was blue, his eyes frozen open.
A ghost carved from ice, waiting for a gathering of his fellow damned before awakening to walk the earth.
The fellow damned… like her?
Horrified, élisabeth banged on the door with her palm.
She shouted the names of all the saints in Heaven.
With a surge of Marcosi’s strength she lunged, breaking through the door, tumbling into the daylight, tearing her sleeve and the pale skin underneath.
She fell to the ground and scrabbled on all fours back towards the house, howling.
She looked up and saw her sister running through the woods towards her.
“Lili! Are you hurt?” Marthe cried.
“Her arm is bleeding!” said Thérèse, close behind.
élisabeth’s lips formed a hoarse rasp. She struggled to her knees as her cap slipped off and her hair fell loose against her face.
Marthe squeezed her arm tightly and said something she could not hear.
Panting, élisabeth bent over and tried to get the air back into her lungs, but the demon had grown so large inside her there was no room for her to inhale.
Marthe moaned. “Good grief, here comes the widow Poulin.”
“What’s happened?” the widow called out from a distance. “I heard screaming.”
The voices swirled around élisabeth, making her dizzy. She was hot and cold at once. She was certain she would faint.
“Tell me what happened,” Marthe urged.
“Dead,” she croaked, pointing at the cowshed. “Man.” She was aware of Marthe squeezing her arm again, and Francoise or Thérèse crying out for God’s help.
The widow reached her side and latched on to her other arm. “What has happened?”
“Lili saw something… someone… dead in the shed.”
Maman Poulin threw her body around élisabeth’s, squeezing her as tightly as a bear. “Mary, Mother of God, it must be him. Is it the neighbour, Dufossé? He went missing three weeks ago. His wife, Hélène, has just told me so herself. Oh, the poor wretch, to have died without confessing his sins.”
The horror of the man’s perfectly composed, perfectly frozen body came back to élisabeth and she began to stammer. “It is Dufossé. He is sitting… sitting in the cowshed.”
“Sitting?” Maman Poulin was incredulous.
“On the woodpile.”
“Then he is alive?” asked Francoise.
“He’s fr-fr-frozen,” élisabeth stuttered. “On the woodpile.”
Maman Poulin shook her by the shoulders. “That can’t be right. What do you mean, he’s sitting on the woodpile? Sitting down, frozen solid?”
élisabeth swallowed. The widow’s lips were drawn in a firm line. There was something strange about Dufossé sitting with his hands folded in his lap. He seemed almost comfortable. élisabeth’s fingers began to tingle.
“I must see him for myself,” Maman Poulin said, standing up and straightening her skirts. She walked towards the shed, grim-faced and silent, Francoise and Thérèse at her heels, élisabeth and Marthe close behind. They filed through the open door.
élisabeth blinked.
Dufossé’s eyes were fixed somewhere on the cabin’s far wall. His beard was full of ice, his lashes trimmed with frost.
“Witchcraft.” The widow gave an almost contented sigh.
“Why so?” Marthe challenged her.
Maman Poulin shot her a peevish glance. “It is the strangest thing I ever saw.”
“I cannot bear to look,” Thérèse said, her voice catching on her words.
Apolline leaned closer to the dead man. “He must have frozen to death.”
The widow shook her head, disbelieving. “Look at him, sitting there with his hands in his lap. Why would anyone just sit down and wait to freeze to death?”
“Maybe he could not get back into the house?” Francoise suggested. “There was a good deal of snow outside the door.”
“Nonsense. Lili broke through the door and look at her. She’s the size of a sparrow.”
“Perhaps he was drunk,” Marthe said. “And could not find his way home. Perhaps he fell asleep.”
“With his eyes open? Sitting up? Who sleeps sitting up in the cold?” Maman Poulin sneered. “No. There is only one explanation for what happened here.”
“My husband is a surgeon,” Apolline announced, though everyone knew Le Picard’s profession, “and he sees a good many corpses. If witches were behind every frozen body in this land, they’d be responsible for half the deaths each winter.”
“Precisely,” the widow said. “Witches are responsible for half our troubles. The Iroquois are responsible for the rest.”
“What… what are we to do about him?” élisabeth finally found her voice. She averted her eyes from the dead man’s gaze, but she knew the half-moon slits in his blue face continued to stare straight at her.
“We must tell Father de Sancy, of course,” Maman Poulin said. “And I suppose we should let Hélène know that she is a widow now.”
“Do we just leave him here?” élisabeth asked.
“He’s doing no harm where he is. He won’t be buried until the ground thaws in May.”
élisabeth hid her face in her hands so as not to look at the dead man again.
One by one the others made the sign of the cross and left the cowshed.
Maman Poulin strode purposefully ahead, determined to be the first to bring the grim news to the man’s widow.
Francoise stopped élisabeth before she could follow.
“Why would Jeanne do such a thing?” Francoise whispered, kicking the snow pile with her boot.
“I thought she was a sorceress, a magical healer. Not an evil witch,” Thérèse said nervously.
élisabeth was about to reply that Jeanne Roy had never done one good thing for her, when Marthe pinched her arm.
“That’s enough,” she snapped. “Do not speak Jeanne’s name aloud again. Especially not in front of the widow.”
“Why not—”
“Because we cannot have her accused. This is the spark that starts the fire. We cannot, must not, let her burn.”
“But what if she killed that man?” élisabeth demanded. “What if a child is next?” She blinked and no longer saw Dufossé’s blue face. She saw the Winter Witch, her finger pointed, lips trembling.
’Twas for you.
Marthe pinched her again, harder.
“Ow,” élisabeth cried.
“Mind what I said. Do not speak Jeanne’s name aloud,” Marthe’s voice was low and urgent. “Especially not in front of the widow.”