Chapter 40
The brides had not been pressed together this tightly since they had stood on the wharf in Dieppe the year before, waiting for the Saint-Jean-Baptiste to take them away from all they knew.
élisabeth had called them into the front room, leaving Marthe alone with Jeanne Roy.
She looked at the faces all around her. Rose and Lou, of course, ready to do whatever was asked of them.
Thérèse and Francoise, one with a worried frown, one with a leer.
Several of the other girls who had married and spread across the island, all of them rounded up by Apolline, who stood tall and smug in the centre of the group.
Only the youngest, Claire, was still unwed and living with the nuns.
Still, she had leapt at the chance to join them when Apolline had arrived with her husband’s cart and horse.
“For who, when called to help a witch, would dare refuse?” she had said with a nervous giggle.
élisabeth wondered how they would succeed.
In the back room she could hear her sister’s moans and Jeanne Roy’s murmurings.
Verger had been sent outside to guard the privy to ensure the widow did not escape.
Francoeur had run back to the prison to see if Jambon and Lajeunesse had been captured by the boy jailor.
Now it was up to her. To find the magic wand that would somehow save Marthe’s life. She climbed up onto a chair.
“Girls, please listen to me.”
They shuffled to attention. Some eyed her and muttered to those standing next to them. élisabeth’s heart sank, for she knew they did not trust her after what she’d done. But she persisted.
“You all know Jeanne Roy has a cloth toy, a poppet made of rags and yarn. What you do not know is that this doll has great power. And Jeanne needs it to save Marthe’s life. Father de Sancy has it—”
“And who’s the idiot who gave it to him?” one of them called out.
élisabeth took a breath and called upon her demon for strength. She would not falter now. “I am. But I am begging you all to help me take it back.”
“Why does she need the doll?” It was Claire, her voice wary.
“It’s where her magic comes from,” said another.
“How do you mean to steal it back?” Francoise asked.
élisabeth waited for the questions to die down before she spoke again. “The doll is called Chamberlen’s Secret. It is a magic wand. It will save Marthe, and when your time comes, it may save you as well.”
A chorus of whispers rose up. Most of the girls were already with child. Perhaps they would be moved to help for their own sakes, even if they feared the task ahead.
“Why do you need so many of us to steal a wand?” Francoise called out again. “The Sulpicians will surely spot a dozen women sauntering up to their seminary. They aren’t that blinded by faith.” She sniggered and nudged Thérèse. But Thérèse brushed her elbow away, not taking her eyes off élisabeth.
“Well, I have a notion…” élisabeth began.
She remembered how the young jailor halted in his tracks when he saw Jeanne Roy in Francoeur’s arms, stupefied by his fear.
Once she too had been frozen by fear. Fear was a powerful enemy, but could it also be their ally?
The demon Marcosi was her steadfast ally now.
She stood a little straighter on the chair.
“Father de Sancy has been hunting witches these many months. Tonight, it is time to turn the tables. Tonight, it is the witches who will go hunting.”
“W-witches?” Claire stammered. “Do you know of witches other than Jeanne here in Ville-Marie?”
“We will be the witches,” élisabeth told her.
The girls looked from one another to élisabeth, shaking their heads and crossing themselves.
“This is madness,” Apolline protested. “She intends to make heretics of us all!”
élisabeth held her hands out, trying to quieten them down. Jeanne Roy hobbled out of the back room on Wari’s arm, wincing as she walked. Only then did the brides fall silent.
“I cannot wait much longer,” Jeanne said.
“I have a plan,” élisabeth assured her. “There are thirteen of us, including Wari. Enough for a full coven.”
“A coven!” Lou laughed. “She does want to turn us into witches!”
“élisabeth, what are you plotting?” Jeanne Roy’s voice was sharp.
“The priests will cower when a coven of witches arrives to claim Chamberlen’s Secret. They will faint dead from fear.”
“élisabeth, the fire you intend to conjure will burn everything it touches,” Jeanne said. “You cannot know the risk you are facing.”
“We are already at risk.” élisabeth raised her voice to be heard above the mounting clamour.
“If we do not claim the doll, Marthe dies. I will not let that happen. I will steal it myself. And once I do, every woman in the colony will be under suspicion. The old priest will wake tomorrow and discover it missing. He will seek witches at every turn. Which farmer’s wife in her garden will Father de Sancy decide is a witch to be burned?
Which wife gone to market will be put to the Question?
Any woman trying to help another through her labours? A witch.”
One by one the girls stopped talking. élisabeth took a deep breath. “Once I take back Chamberlen’s Secret there will be such a witch craze in Ville-Marie none will be safe. None can hide. Thus, I propose that we do not cringe. We do it together. The more powerful we appear, the safer we will be.”
“This is not right,” Jeanne Roy said. “The solution to a witch craze cannot be to create more witches—”
élisabeth hopped down from the chair and took her neighbour’s hands in hers. “I believe what you’ve told me about natural philosophy, I do. But science and reason will not get your doll back from a priest. Tonight, you must listen to me. You must believe in magic.”
Jeanne Roy opened her mouth, as if to object, then she stopped. “Heaven help me for what I am about to say.” She cleared her throat and closed her eyes. “Let the witches’ hunt begin.”
élisabeth leapt back onto the chair. “There is no time to waste. Take off your bodices and strip to your shifts. Rat your hair and use the flour in the workroom to powder your faces white. Make yourselves alarming, deranged. From this moment, we are the Normandy coven!”
No one moved. The brides from the Saint-Jean-Baptiste eyed her doubtfully. Then Apolline spoke.
“Surely we are not the Normandy coven,” she said. There was a pause, and the only noise was Marthe’s fretful moan from behind the burlap curtain. Apolline raised one eyebrow. “Surely we are the Montréal coven.”
It was the spark that lit the fire. Chaos broke out in the bakehouse.
Girls unlaced their bodices and flung them in the air.
They tore off each other’s caps and pulled ribbons out of their hair.
élisabeth took off her skirt and ran her fingers through her already tangled brown curls.
She twisted and teased until her mane was thick and terrible to behold.
“You have the cunning of a wolf,” Wari told her. “Do not forget that.”
élisabeth smiled shyly. She felt somehow as if she had been blessed, as surely as if she had put the Eucharist on her tongue.
She gazed around the room, her eyes landing on each of the wild girls, and for a moment she saw each of them as they should be.
Their true selves. If élisabeth had the cunning of a wolf, then Lou had the stealth of a wild cat, Rose the heart of a bear.
Apolline the wisdom of an eagle. Each of the girls was transformed.
Witches, all of them.
“It’s time,” élisabeth declared.
One by one the ghostly brides slipped out into the dusk.
The sky was bruised and purple, day hovering on the cusp of night.
Apolline took her place at the head of the coven, élisabeth walked beside them, imparting instructions along the row.
When they reached the stone seminary, she put her hand on the wrought-iron gate and pushed it open.
The witches floated towards the priests’ home.
They spread out and walked slowly as they approached the manor, the white of their chemises shining in the rising moonlight. When they reached the front door, élisabeth tried the handle. It was locked.
“What do we do now?” Lou whispered.
élisabeth scanned the rough-hewn edges of the stone building, then drifted towards the windows. The shutters of the study were not fully closed. She pushed one back and pried her fingers underneath the window.
“We climb,” she announced, pushing the frame up and open.
She put her foot into a space between the stones in the wall and pulled herself up.
With her hair loose and her cheeks white with flour, she was a demon climbing her way out of Hell.
Using all the strength in her arms she hauled herself up and over the windowsill.
She landed in an empty room. It was the library, where not many months before she had come to ask the famed witch hunter her questions.
She blinked rapidly, trying to force her eyes to see what she was looking for.
Rose clambered up and onto the sill behind her, followed by the rest. Some were too heavy with child to climb forward and so were dragged in backwards.
Lou swung over the sill more forcefully than she expected and swore out loud when she landed hard on her bottom.
“God’s wounds!” she cried.
élisabeth heard a noise overhead. She knew they only had a moment before the priests came down the stairs to discover them. She turned around, trying to get her bearings in the dark. Where would Father de Sancy have put the doll?
“Try the cabinet,” she whispered to Lou, as a voice rang out from the hallway.
“Who is there?”
élisabeth raised her hand above her head, a captain readying her troops. The brides waited, frozen, as they heard the sound of footsteps shuffling across the paving stones. The door swung open, and the glimmer of a candle spilled into the room.