Chapter 37
Marthe was in a sea of pain, bent over, hands on her sides, feeling a surge of agony until the wave crested and she was left bobbing along, exhausted, waiting for the current to drag her under again.
Verger had moved her into the widow’s room, to the bed with the cattail mattress.
In between the waves, Marthe wearily rubbed her palms over the ticking and noticed that indeed it was much finer than straw.
“What can I do? I am not usefully employed. Employ me!” Verger fretted, at once by her side and then instantly pacing the room in long strides. élisabeth had been gone more than an hour. In that time Verger had run his hand through his hair so often that flour had coloured his hair white.
“Thirsty,” Marthe said in a small voice.
Her husband leapt to fetch her small beer. He returned and held the pewter mug to her lips as she drank, sickly swallows that would never quench a thirst. He pushed her hair back from her face, tucking a loose tendril behind her ear.
“You will survive this,” he said, full of determination. “You will.”
Marthe did not respond. She sat in the bed with the cattail mattress, her head on her knees, bobbing in the sea.
“You must survive, my Marthe,” Verger said, more plaintive now.
He rubbed her back and she felt her shoulders slump with relief.
They had not sent for any of their near neighbours, lest they discover the widow in her outhouse prison and release a tornado of trouble.
Once élisabeth returned, Verger would run for one of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste girls. For now, Marthe had only her husband.
“You must survive, my Marthe. For we have so much we want to do. You are going to sell jam, remember? Remember all our plans?”
She thought of raspberries and blackberries and the dark currents they called blueberries and could almost taste the summer fruit on her tongue.
She would love to have sold jam in her little shop on the corner of Rue Saint-Paul.
A white shelf with jars full of deep reds and near-black purples. She would have loved that.
“You will survive, Marthe,” Verger pleaded.
“From the moment I saw you in the chapel, I knew…” He lost his words, then tried again.
“You said to me, that first day, that your mother had died when you were a child. I thought it would make you happy, to have an older companion. I thought that Barbe Poulin would be the mother you had lost. I failed you. And I know you are disappointed with me, wanting us to have more—”
“Verger?” Marthe struggled to raise her head off her knees.
“Yes?” He laid his hands on top of hers. “Yes, my Marthe?”
“You’ve not failed me.” She wanted to explain how powerless she felt, watching her father die, slowly, then all at once when the blood ran from his vein.
She wanted to explain to him she only ever wanted to be rich so that she would not lose someone she loved again.
She wanted to confess that she liked spending time with him alone, that his kisses were as good as any gold.
She could not summon the words. “I… I hoped for a different fate” was all she said.
This prompted Verger to leap from her side and run out of the room. He returned a moment later, a purse in his hands. “I have put aside a few coins every month. I have a small sum saved. I will call for the barber-surgeon, he will help you. I will go now—”
“No,” Marthe gasped weakly. “Not the surgeon, I beg you.”
She remembered what Apolline had said. The surgeon was only called when a father wanted his child cut out of the mother’s belly.
But Marthe could not explain; she hadn’t the strength or the time before the next wave was upon her.
The whip cracked. She circled her belly with her arms, laid her head on her knees and groaned.
The sea dragged her under again.