Free Silence of Stone by Annamarie Beckel

up herslate.
    After they moved to the cave, Marguerite no longer felt like Eve in the garden. She began thinking more about Job and a faith tested. She picked up a sharp stone and began cutting lines into red granite walls not yet blackened by soot.
    We must not forget the sabbath, she said, or the saints’ days.
    She read her New Testament daily. And she prayed. Marguerite implored God to send a ship, any ship. And every day, without fail, Michel built a fire on the beach, adding green boughs so that grey smoke billowed heavenward.
    No ship came. Only the wind.

    Wind and rain flail against the window. The Franciscan pours wine, dark and red, liquid rubies in the candlelight. I stare into a small flame and think of Isabelle’s rosy lips, her skin like creamy silk. I hear an infant’s whimper, then only the moan and clatter of wind and rain.
    The cheese was gone this morning. I put out a small bone, a scrap of rabbit still attached.
    Thevet rattles a paper. “Where was the cave?”
    â€œNear the centre of the island.”
    â€œHow big was it?”
    â€œAbout two body lengths’ long. Not quite as wide.” Hardly big enough for the three of them to lie down at the same time. A second, sloping chambertoward the back where Marguerite could keep her trunk.
    â€œThere was one small area high enough for a person to stand, but they built the fire there, so the smoke could escape.”
    The Franciscan scribbles down my words. I do not bother explaining that Michel took the poles from the shelters, and with the precious few nails they had, he blocked one entrance and made the other more narrow to keep out the wind and cold.
    â€œWhat did you eat?”
    â€œRabbits, partridge, fish, mussels, berries, gulls.” Michel fashioned a small net from twine. He used offal for bait then hid behind rocks and waited: ten throws for every gull caught. The gulls became wary, screaming their fear and rage. Then fifty throws for every gull caught.
    â€œSeal?”
    I nod. Michel tried to shoot the seals that basked on the rocks, but even when his aim was true, their grey forms slipped from the smooth surface and sank before he could retrieve them. Later, much later, Marguerite and Damienne ate whatever stinking carcass washed up on shore.
    The monk sits back and makes a tent with his fingers, his lecturing pose. “
Oui
,” he says, “I know from my own travels to Terra Neuve–”
    â€œNova,” I say. “Terra Nova…Terre Neuve.”
    Thevet sucks his teeth, annoyed at being interrupted, and corrected. “As I was saying,” he continues, “this country is inhabited by barbariansclothed in wild animal skins. Intractable, ungracious, and unapproachable, unless by force…as those who go there to fish for cod will attest. They live almost exclusively on fish, especially seals, whose flesh is very good and delicate to them. Or so I’ve been told by Cartier.”
    I smell tallow and think of a dead seal wedged between rocks, rancid, rotten, the meat already slimy. Marguerite had to fight off ravens and gulls.
    The monk blathers on, not hearing how the rhythm of his words ill-fits the rain’s drumming. “They make a certain oil from the fat of this fish, which, after being melted, has a reddish colour.” He lifts his chalice and sips dramatically. “They drink it with their meals as we here would drink wine or water. And they make coats and clothing from its skin.”
    Lecture finished for now, he considers me. “But you were there for more than two years, alone for nearly a year.” His forehead creases. “How did you survive?”
    Thin white lines on smoke-blackened walls: eight hundred and thirty-two. Scrape of stone upon stone. I hear them then:
How long, O Lord? How long? For my days are vanished like smoke, and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire.
    â€œShe also ate roots, seaweed. Bark.”
    â€œHow could you