Chapter 40 #3
“I know it hurts,” Jeanne Roy said. élisabeth heard a metallic click as Jeanne joined the forceps back together. “I’m ready. I have a hold of your baby’s head. So push with all your strength and I will pull the child out.”
Marthe’s body sagged. élisabeth squeezed her hand.
“Come, Marthe. Push.”
“I can’t.” Marthe’s face was flushed, her eyes unfocused.
“You can do it,” élisabeth insisted. “You would not let me falter on the ship when I could not even rise from the bunk, when fear had me gripped by the throat. And I will not let you die now. So take my hand. We will do it together.”
Slowly Marthe raised herself onto her elbows. élisabeth kept a tight grip on her hand, squeezing all of the demon’s strength into Marthe’s exhausted frame.
Marthe locked eyes with the witch and furrowed her brow.
She pushed and Jeanne Roy pulled. The witch gave the order for another push, and another and then her arm arced towards the sky as she used Chamberlen’s Secret to guide the child into the world. When the child’s head was delivered, she crouched and caught his body with her free hand.
“Rose, a cloth,” she commanded. Rose leapt forward so that Jeanne Roy could wrap the tiny baby in clean linen and rub its back until élisabeth heard the sound of its cry.
She thought she would faint with joy. Jeanne passed the baby to Rose and crouched again between Marthe’s legs.
élisabeth placed a kiss on her sister’s sweaty brow and rubbed her shoulders to distract her from the delivery of the afterbirth.
“You are a mother, Marthe. You have a son.”
Marthe looked groggily about the room for the child but before Rose could present him, she started moaning again.
“Jeanne?” élisabeth’s voice rose in fear.
“It is the second child, clamouring to be born. I may not need the forceps this time.”
Marthe let out a cry loud enough to shake the entire village.
élisabeth knew that if she had the cunning and strength of a wolf, Marthe could claim the spirit of a lion.
After several moments, she delivered the second child, a red-faced cherub with a squall to match her tiny brother’s.
Jeanne cut the cord with Jambon’s knife and handed the baby to her mother as Rose handed over her twin.
Marthe held them tightly, staring into their pomegranate faces.
“A boy and a girl, Marthe. Aren’t you clever?” Rose whispered.
“We have been blessed,” Marthe said, a note of awe in her voice. “Wait, where is Verger? Verger!”
The curtain twitched and Verger stuck his head into the room. Marthe looked up at him, her eyes shining.
“Come, meet our children.”
He tumbled over his feet to rush to her side. He laid a kiss on his wife’s forehead.
“Thank God,” he prayed, his eyes closed. “You’re alive.”
“Well, I couldn’t leave you,” she murmured. “We have a lot of jam to make.”
Verger started to laugh and cry, first covering Marthe’s forehead in kisses, then each of his infant children.
élisabeth took in the sight of her sister, safely delivered, and then gazed at Jeanne Roy.
She crouched at Marthe’s feet, her raven-dark eyes heavy with fatigue, her skin bruised beneath her torn and bloody chemise.
Gone were the velvet witch’s fine clothes and curled lip.
She had been broken for her beliefs. A saint in the making.
Shimmering with knowledge.
Jeanne tried to stand, but her ankles wobbled. élisabeth leapt forward and took her arm. They hobbled out of the back room, leaving Marthe and her family in peace.
“How can you pretend you are not a witch, when you can work such magic?” élisabeth blurted.
Jeanne Roy looked at élisabeth “I will admit that the moment a child comes into the world is magical, even to me.”
élisabeth gave her a triumphant smile. “So it is true. Magic is real. Witchcraft does exist.”
“I…” Jeanne Roy looked weary. They stepped back as Rose rushed past them to the workroom, where the rest of the brides had gathered.
They heard a cheer go up next door as the news was delivered.
Jeanne drew a breath. “Chamberlen’s Secret is just practical philosophy, the result of careful study and experimentation. ”
“Yes, exactly. Knowledge is magic. And you have so much of it, you must teach us all. So that we too may become witches.”
Jeanne Roy laughed then, and the sound of fairies’ handbells chiming filled the room. élisabeth felt her heart lift, then a sudden worry struck her. “Jeanne. The twins are so small. And more than a month early. Can your magic, or practical philosophy, help them live?”
Jeanne nodded. “They have every chance. I will watch over them as long as I can.” Then her smile wilted. “Though I may not be here for long. I will have to flee the Church soon.”
“No, Father de Sancy is dead,” élisabeth told her. “He can never trouble you again. And with the witch hunter gone, perhaps reason can now prevail.”
“I will make sure of that,” Francoeur said, stepping into the room.
“In the morning, I will go to the Sulpicians and say that there are rumours afoot they were bested by witches. That will quash their talk of a Montréal coven. For who would put their trust in an order that can’t cure an outbreak of demonic possession?
They will hold their tongues and suppress that news, for fear of losing followers to the Jesuits. ”
Jeanne Roy swallowed. “What of the accusation of witchcraft against me?”
“You never confessed to anything! And Dufossé’s wife will testify that he was drunk and fell asleep while stealing our wood. She will swear to it.” élisabeth crossed her arms. “I will see to it that she does.”
“So it is over? Truly over?” Jeanne crumpled into a chair. Wari wrapped her arms around her.
“I’m sure every sermon for several months will preach nothing but the immorality of drunken wives and powdered faces,” Francoeur said. “But for you, Jeanne, yes. I believe it is over.”
Jeanne Roy put her face in her hands and wept. élisabeth looked away, straight into her husband’s eyes.
“Francoeur?” élisabeth stepped away from the witch and her friend, towards the bakery door. She motioned for her husband to join her. He followed, and then leaned against the wall opposite, eyeing her carefully. élisabeth gazed back, not sure where to begin.
“You told me on our wedding night that you were glad to have married me,” she started. “Do you still feel the same?”
He locked eyes on hers. “You’re not what I expected in a wife.”
From his words, élisabeth could not glean his mood.
“I’m sorry for my deception,” she said in a small voice.
She meant it truly. Not for hiding the demon from him, but for convincing herself that Rémy loved her, and believing it for so long that she did not let herself fall in love with Francoeur until it was too late.
That was the deception she truly regretted.
For she would never meet as good a man as her husband again.
“I am glad that I married you. Even if… Marcosi has kept us apart.”
Francoeur frowned and started to speak. “About that. You promised—”
“I will let Jeanne bleed me.”
“You will?”
“Yes. I have seen her skill. She has more power than any sorceress in the New World or the Old. If my blood is the price I must pay to end the curse, then I will give it, willingly.”
Francoeur gazed at her. “Your curse is melancholy.”
élisabeth let the word hang in the air, wondering at its true meaning.
She could not believe there was black bile coursing through her veins, no matter what Jeanne said.
But she understood fear, and she knew sadness, a sadness so deep that she could barely lift herself from her bed to carry on.
She did not know how God expected her to continue with such a heavy heart, except by giving her children to love to replace the family she had lost.
Another notion started to tingle in élisabeth’s mind.
Had this all been God’s plan for her?
If she had not chosen her own path and walked up to the clifftop with Rémy, if she had not run to New France to escape her demon, would she have arrived where God meant for her to be?
She pushed back her sleeves and held out her bare arms to her husband. She felt, somehow, absolved of her sins. She was who God meant her to be: a demoniac, a wolf, a sister, a witch.
Just not a wife.
“I will let Jeanne open my vein to see if it helps my… my melancholy.” She gave him a wistful smile. “I only wish I had the courage to do it before the Sulpicians annulled our marriage.”
Francoeur’s hodgepodge hazel eyes flickered with a spark of—what? Mischief?
“I never asked for the annulment,” he said.
She blinked. “You did not?”
“No.”
“You said… we could not be saved.”
Francoeur rubbed his chin. “I wonder now if I might have been mistaken.”
“I am not what you expected in a wife,” she said, repeating his words.
“I wonder, though, if it might be helpful to have a wolf around the house. A passably pretty wolf.” Francoeur started to smile. “I’ve seen what you can do with witch hunters. I wonder if you might also keep the rabbits at bay?”
“Rabbits!”
“Very meddlesome for crops.”
She pushed herself off the wall and took a step closer to him. “You could not ask them for an annulment… because you want me to be your wife.”
The smile on Francoeur’s face grew wider until it was impossible not to smile back. élisabeth took a step closer until her lips hovered near his.
“Because you love me.”
She kissed him, and all at once the taste of cloves danced on her tongue. Francoeur put one hand on the back of her neck and crushed her mouth, squeezing her as if he were testing to see if she would break.
She never would. She had the heart of a wolf, the strength of a demon. Her sister had been saved. Her friends stood by her. And her husband, her sandy-haired soldier, was in love with her.
She knew then that the luck of the stars shone down on them.
And she understood that she would not just survive in New France.
She would thrive.