Free Silence of Stone by Annamarie Beckel Page B

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.
    â€œ
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