Silence of Stone

SILENCE
OF
STONE

a novel of Marguerite de Roberval

ANNAMARIE BACKEL

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Beckel, Annamarie, 1951-

Silence of stone: a novel of Marguerite de Roberval / Annamarie Beckel.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-55081-243-5

1. Roberval, Marguerite de--Fiction. I. Title.

PS8553.E29552S53 2008         813'.54           C2008-900107-9

Copyright © 2008 Annamarie Beckel

A
LL
R
IGHTS
R
ESERVED
. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Dedicated to the memory of
Marguerite de Roberval
and to
Elizabeth Boyer whose diligent research
authenticated the documents surrounding
the legend of Marguerite.

“After the first voyage made by Jacques Cartier, as the great king François was desirous, both of learning much, and of hearing about all that was rare and exquisite of foreign lands, he ordered Roberval, a French gentleman, to go to this country of New-Land and from there to go into the land of Canada proper with a good company, and (if he could) to populate this country with native Frenchmen…”

A Collection of Documents Relating to Jacques Cartier
and the Sieur de Roberval
, as translated by H. P. Biggar, 1930.

“[S]he arrived in France after living for two years and five months in that same place and having come to the village of Nautron [Nontron] country of Perigord, at which time I was with her and she made ample discourse with me of this misadventure and of all her past fortunes.”

André Thevet, 1586,
Grande Insulaire
, as translated
by Elizabeth Boyer in
A Colony of One
, 1983.

“[H]er Servant, Damienne a native of Normandy, who was an old bawd, aged sixty years who served as protectress of her whom she shielded to play the wanton…”

André Thevet, 1586,
Grande Insulaire
, as translated
by Elizabeth Boyer in
A Colony of One
, 1983.

I have made a vocation of forgetting. I work at snuffing memories, one by one.
Sisst, sisst.
Wet fingertips to flame.

Yet, when I am at my work the voices intrude, rekindling hot white fire from grey ash:
Grievous sin. Impardonnable. N'oubliez pas, do not forget.
They torment me with psalms:
How long, O Lord, wilt thou forget me? Out of the depths I have cried to thee.

I cover my ears, but I cannot silence them.

I heard them first on the island. Soft sibilant whispers, they appeared like a sorcerer's silks pulled from sky, stone, and sea: sapphire, ruby, emerald, ivory. Some were cloaked in ebony feathers. The voices taunted and mocked, comforted and soothed:
Abandoned. Punished. Roberval. Her sin, not yours. L'amour.

I was on the Isle of Demons for twenty-seven months. Nearly a year alone: three hundred and twenty days. I know, because I kept a careful count: lines scratched on smoke-darkened walls. I hear it yet, the scrape of stone upon stone.

Nonetheless, if you dared to ask, and I deigned to answer, I would tell you that it was not me, but a different Marguerite, who was left on the island. I would tell you that it was she who suffered there, and died.

I would tell you that my life began when I buried her.

I was just twenty-one when Breton fishermen took me from the island and brought me back to France in 1544. I am thirty-seven now. Sixteen years. Yet I continue to dress in black crepe, in widow's weeds, and my hair, unloosed from its widow's cap, falls in long chestnut curls, errant strands of white woven within. My face is indelibly bronzed, and my eyes, once the colour of new spring pastures, have faded to the flat hue of a placid sea – despite what roils beneath. My arms and legs have remained lean and sinewy, and no matter how hard I scrub, the skin of my palms recalls the musky feral scent of a wolf.

I live alone in Nontron, in a small garret above the scrivener's shop. I prefer solitude now, and silence. Low and raspy, my voice is unpleasant, even to me, as if I had swallowed the island's rocks and they lodged in my throat. For too long I had no need to coax words along that stony path, and now I speak as few as I can – and listen to even fewer. The
cacophony of voices, their tangled commingling, is too loud and confusing. I cannot discern which words come from without – and which from within.

I am a teacher of little girls. Men of means send their daughters to the school downstairs for lessons in etiquette and elocution. The fathers reveal a certain wariness in the tilt of their heads and the set of their mouths, but they do not forget that Marguerite was a Roberval, that she once danced the
pavane
and
galliard
at the court of King François I. They know that I am the only woman in Nontron who can read and write in both French and Latin, and the fathers want their daughters to be able to read the scriptures, for they have turned away from the Roman Church and embraced the new religion. They are Huguenots.

So I teach the little girls French and Latin, forbidding them their Angoulême dialect, but mostly I teach them to be silent or, if they must speak, to say their words softly so as not to offend my ears. I also teach them needlework, and I teach them numbers and letters, and instruct them in religion. I teach them about the nature of God.

God is not the Word. God is silence.