Silence of Stone (10 page)

As more and more weeks passed and no ship came, Michel stopped playing the citre. No longer smiling indulgently, he began to chastise Marguerite when she asked him to play. He kicked at her chessboard, grinding the pieces under his boots. And he no longer cared how hard she worked – or if the work was proper for a lady. He began to scoff when she prayed.

I stretch out my legs and rub my arms for warmth. There was hardly room in the cramped cave for all of them to lie down. With Damienne so near, Michel and Marguerite were circumspect, confining their love-making to the woods and open meadows. Even then, Michel was far less free in his attentions, his once-buoyant spirits weighed down, melancholy and angry humours growing within. Marguerite tried to flirt and tease, stroking his chest and untying the lacings of his shirt. She ran her fingers through his beard, an unkempt tangled mass, no longer a neatly trimmed triangle. Michel swept her hands away and stared at the roiling sea.

Too late in the year, he said. Roberval has gone on to Charlesbourg Royal. He cannot send a ship until spring. How can we survive until spring?

Now it was Marguerite's turn to offer assurances. The viceroy was angry and wanted to punish me, she acknowledged. But he is my protector. I am his ward, his beloved cousin. He will come. You will see.

And, she added brightly, at least there are no demons, no Indians. She lifted her hands to cup Michel's cheeks, but then dropped them to her sides, alarmed by the dark anger she saw.

Marguerite never lost faith in Roberval's intention to rescue her, but when more weeks passed and he did not send a ship, she began to fear for his life, anxious that the ships had foundered and that her uncle had drowned.

Never could she have imagined his hardness of heart. Never could she have imagined that he wanted her to die.

Le bâtard meurtrier.

“
Oui
,” I agree, “murderous bastard.”

I think of the Queen of Navarre. You can do nothing, she said. Roberval is viceroy, the law in New France. You must leave it to God to punish him.

Leave it to God. Km-mm-mm.

Would that I had the powers of a witch. I would have killed him at the first opportunity.

Debts must be paid.

I nod.
Oui
, debts must be paid.

My dark soul would have traveled at night when my body was asleep. To Paris, to the Church of the Innocents. I would have used Michel's dagger to slit his throat. I run a finger along the sharp edge of the pottery shard and imagine blue forget-me-nots floating in a pool of scarlet.

If I did not do it, why can I see it all so clearly: Roberval, his ice-blue eyes wide with terror, a gaping grin from ear to ear, blood covering my hands,
dripping through my fingers? Why do the scents of blood and salt lace my dreams?

Dawn: grey ashy wool. I wake hunched, my back against a tree, my cloak wrapped around my shoulders and knees. My hand has released the shards to the ground. Legs stiff, I rise awkwardly. The cloak's hem carries barbed seeds, and I begin to pick them off. Then stop. I will carry them back to Nontron and scatter them in gardens. Can wild unruly things live in such tamed places, within the security of rock walls? I drop the hem of my cloak, pick up the shards, and pull the rough wool closer in.

Wool. Crouched in the cave, Marguerite opened her trunk and considered the creamy satin and rose silk. She wanted to slide the rich fabrics between her fingertips and feel the soft silk and smooth satin on her cheeks, but she dared not touch them now with her rough hands and ragged nails. She looked at the costly gowns, then she wished for wool, of any colour, and a spinning wheel and loom, so she could make warm cloaks and sturdy breeches. Her thin chemise and cotton gowns had become tattered, her white linen cuffs filthy and fraying. She'd stopped wearing her stiffened stomacher only days after they were abandoned. Here on the island it seemed a foolish contrivance, especially when Damienne or Michel had to lace it tight every morning and then loosen it at night.

She carefully elbowed aside the silk and satin, then rummaged in the trunk, searching for something useful. Marguerite was glad that she had no looking glass to reflect her darkened face and chapped lips – glad that she could not see in her own eyes the despair she saw in Michel's and Damienne's.

The cave was silent, save for the sounds of her own rustling. Even in the long nights when they huddled in the cave together, there were only the sounds of the fire's crackle and hiss, the dull clunk of wood stacked upon wood, the crack and pop of Damienne's joints. Michel no longer played his citre. It crouched beneath a stone ledge like a shunned child.

From the day of their abandonment, they had avoided speaking of hopes and plans for their lives in New France, but they had asked each other for songs and ballads and amusing stories about their friends and their childhoods. Damienne had rattled on endlessly about the merits of her long-dead husband, and in an intimate moment, told Marguerite about a stillborn son. They occasionally discussed religion and politics and wondered aloud about life at court. But now, weeks later, they had ceased to speak altogether, as if confinement had made them too familiar. They grunted and pointed, mumbled only to themselves.

Marguerite continued, however, to talk to God. I will love thee, O Lord, she prayed, my strength… Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak…O save me for thy mercy's sake.

All of them stank of sweat and grime and blood.
What use to dip white linen collars and cuffs in water and beat them against rocks when they had no soap? What use to wash anything, even their own hands and faces?

They'd also begun to carry the stink of fear. The cave hoarded their stench as if it were a thing to be savoured.

During long hungry nights, Marguerite could think only of food: bread, cheese, roasted pig, apples, honeyed hazelnuts, wine. Scarcely able to believe it now, she recalled evenings when she'd been so full she'd turned away from the table and proffered chunks of roasted pig, dripping with fat, to the king's hounds.

Marguerite reached for an ivory box in the corner of the trunk, slid open the cover. Needles. Could she somehow fashion usable clothing from rabbit skins? They'd begun to save them, though she was afraid to consider what that might mean. Were they now reconciled? She shook her head to dismiss the thought. She would not think ahead, would not imagine a winter on the island. It was only the beginning of September. Her uncle would come soon.

In the corner of the trunk, her fingers found a stack of clean muslin rags. How long since she'd needed them? She sat back on her heels and counted the white lines on the dark wall: fifty-two days they had been on the island, and it had been at least several weeks before that.

Marguerite laid her hands on her flat belly.
Non
, it could not be.

I hear an infant's wails. I run toward the sound. But now the cries are behind me. I spin around and run the other way. The wails become whimpers, coming from high in the trees. Then there is only silence and the sound of my own breathing as I suck air deep into my chest. I slump to the cold ground and wait for my breathing to quiet.

If the baby were mine, I would weep. But she was Marguerite's.

I chew on bread and cheese, the bread so tough and dry it pulls at my teeth. When I came back to the garret, I was oddly pleased to find the bone, with its scrap of meat, gone. I decided, quite suddenly, to be wildly wasteful. The decision made me tremble with the eagerness of a young girl. I put a small piece of cheese just outside the window. Around it I scattered a fine dust of ashes, the ash slipping through my fingertips like grey silk. I want to know that it is the yellow-striped cat, and not rats, who is benefiting from my small gifts of food. Has she ceased to fear me?

Fear. In all its guises: worry, terror, despair. Those humours filling the bowels so there is room for nothing else. So quickly did Michel succumb to melancholy and anger, and the soot-black humour of fear.

The evening when Marguerite finally told Michel they had all shared one roasted gull, the meat tough and stringy and tasting of fish. They had also eaten a
few mussels and whelks Marguerite had gathered, her skirts bunched up around her waist, the icy water stinging her feet and calves and making her hands ache. Damienne had retired to the cave to give the young couple some privacy by the fire near the harbour, but there were no tender caresses, no loving words.

Marguerite steadied her voice, trying to disguise her own fear. I have counted as best I can, she said. Early April.

Michel bowed his head. None of us will live to see April, he muttered to the bones and shells at his feet.

Non
, she said. You will see. A ship will come. I will give birth to our child at Charlesbourg Royal in the company of other colonists, in the company of women who know of such things.

Michel tugged his fingers through his matted beard and barked a harsh laugh. When he looked up at Marguerite, his smirk was cruel. Perhaps, he said, you will have the good fortune to lose the child. Early.

With a sharp intake of breath, Marguerite spun away from him, but too late. She had already seen. Despair had snuffed out his love for her, leaving behind only a faint trail of grey smoke and dark ash.

She turned toward the broad expanse of unforgiving sea and searched amongst the cold waves for a psalm to comfort her. She recited the words almost silently so that Michel would not hear her and mock.

Hear, O Lord, my prayer, she murmured, and let
my cry come to thee. Turn not away thy face from me. In the day when I am in trouble, incline thy ear to me…For my days are vanished like smoke, and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire.

Turn not away from me. Vanished like smoke. Fuel for the fire. Km-mm-mm.

Shivering, I decide to kindle a fire. It is the sabbath, and I do not have to go downstairs to teach the girls. I do not have to meet with the Franciscan. At dusk, I will walk the woods and fields outside Nontron, but I will stay away from the river. I do not want to hear the sound of water. Ever. I will listen, instead, for the beat of black wings, the raucous croaks and softer
km-mm-mms
that tell me they are there, keeping watch.

Isabelle blows small bursts of air through pursed lips. She scrinches her eyes as she tries to pass yarn through the eye of a blunt needle. Frustrated, she lays the needle down beside the stocking she is darning. The stocking is lumpy with tangles and knots, and her fingertips are red.

She slides off her bench and walks toward me, takes a pinch of my skirt and tugs. “Madame de Roberval,” she says, “why do we never sing? I would like to sing.”

I think of Marguerite's gentle voice rising and falling in prayers and psalms, of Michel singing romantic ballads,
les chansons d'amour
.

“And dance,” she says excitedly, grabbing my hand. “Papa says you were often at court. You must know how to dance.”

“Your father is mistaken. I was never at court.” I try not to imagine the other lies he is telling this child.

“But Papa–”