Silence of Stone (19 page)

Did he believe that I hungered only for food?

I waited. Finally he came, emerging once again from the fog. I wanted to rush forward, but I held myself back. He laid down the packet and picked up the silk pouch. He was unhurried as he unwrapped the ring. He placed it in his palm, the pearl like a pale full moon. The feather in his hair danced in the soft wind.

I stepped forward then, my words soft but insistent, my hands clasped as if in prayer. Please, please, I begged, take me with you…or come, be with me. Do not leave me alone.

“Those natives who dwell inland towards Baccaleos are wicked and cruel.” The words slip into my ears as Thevet continues to lecture. “They mask their faces, not with masks or cloths, but by painting them with diverse colours, especially blue and red, so to render themselves hideous.”

The ravens mumbled and murmured:
km-mmmm, km-mm-mm.
I opened my hand to show him the bits of dried bark cradled in my palm. His dark eyes, as discerning as the ravens', considered me, and I slowly extended two fingers to touch his black hair, as smooth as the rose silk. His cheek was solid and warm, and I saw a small white scar above his eyebrow. A man, not a spirit.

Ever so slowly, as if he were trying to capture a butterfly, he reached out and touched my lips, brushing a thumb across them, his warm fingers cupping my chin.

Lost in the pleasure and comfort of touch, I
closed my eyes. Then I heard the ravens call out:
quork-quork-quork, kek-kek-kek
.

My eyes flew open. He was gone, vanished into the fog. The pearl ring and an ebony feather lay atop the square of rose silk.

“These men are big and strong and go around clothed in skins.” Thevet gives a small disdainful laugh. “They draw up their hair in a top-knot just like we bind up horses' tails over here.”

“The feather.”

He nods. “
Oui
, they decorate themselves with feathers.”

I lift my palm to my nose and smell the heavy aroma of dried bark and leaves.

The Franciscan thrusts out his fat lower lip, his face perplexed. “How did you manage to survive that winter?”

“Ravens.”

“You ate ravens?”

“
Non
,
Père
, I followed them to food.”

“I!” he exclaims. “Finally you have said
I
.” He takes a deep satisfied breath as if he has just completed an arduous task. “At last…at long last, I have made you accept that you are Marguerite.”

He does not understand. He will never understand.

“Following the ravens? Clever, but was the food not already dead and rotting?” His face wears his revulsion. “Why did you not shoot something? A deer or a bear?”

“The powder lost its force.”

“How did you protect yourself?”

I shrug. “There was no need.”

“But you could not have lived on
carrion
.”

“I snared rabbits, ate tree bark and roots, seaweed.”

“You could not have survived an entire winter on that, Marguerite. You must have been helped…by something.”

I hear their voices:
Saved by our grace, not God's. Marguerite is dead, but you must live. Her sin, not yours.

“God,” I say flatly.

“God?”

I try to bolster my lies with enthusiasm. “When demons came to tempt me, screeching and howling, it was God who helped me, God who provided a shield against wolves and bears.” I wave my hands, palms out, my angry wound visible. I try to make my voice high and light, filled with awe. “It was as if his angels filled my belly. I did not hunger. When the angels appeared, the demons fled.”

The Franciscan's face is suffused with wonder. He bends over his paper and scribbles frenetically, recording my lies. “What did the angels look like?” he asks, not looking up.

“They wore shining white robes. They had golden wings and golden hair.”

“How many?”

“Three.” Always there must be three – or seven.

“How big?”

“As big as a tall man, but slender.” I look behind the Franciscan and see a smooth bronzed face, a
small white scar above the eyebrow, an ebony feather turning in the wind.

Thevet strokes his gold cross. “How did you know the angels were not demons disguised as angels?”

Kek-kek-kek. How long, O Lord? How long? Cark-cark-cark.

I pause to listen, and to think. I hear the scrape of stone upon stone: three hundred and twenty days, three hundred and twenty nights. Alone. But not alone.

“I tested them,” I say finally. “When I began reciting psalms the angels stayed. When I prayed they bowed their heads.”

Thevet closes his eyes and bows his own head.“The perfect test, Marguerite. The perfect test.” He looks up. “And did you express to them your contrition for your grievous sins?”

I stare at his sanctimonious face.

Grievous sin. Impardonnable. La pénitence. Her sin, not yours.

“
Oui
,” I say. “The angels offered absolution.”

Quork-quork-quork. Kek-kek-kek.

He dips his quill in black ink to record what I have said. He seems to have forgotten that only yesterday he believed me possessed. Now he believes I've seen and talked with angels.

L' idiot, l'imbécile.

“
Oui
,” I answer.

As he writes, the monk runs his tongue over his fat lips, as if he finds my description of angels
provocative.

The voices laugh:
Le Père pervers. Le Père lascif.

“And in the spring,” I say, “the angels brought the seals…just like manna from heaven.”

Le cadeau. Le cadeau. Les esprits de cet endroit.

I see Marguerite, heavy with Michella, sabre raised. Like her, I filled my belly with their rich flesh and their fat, but unlike Marguerite, I did not believe the seals to be a gift from Michel or from God. The seals were a gift from the spirits of that place. They were a gift to the bears and to the ravens. The seals were their own gift to themselves.

The ravens surrounded me and ate their fill. We feasted alongside great white bears and their cubs. I did not fear them or their
huff-huff-huff
or their enormous paws. They looked at me, their small black eyes mildly curious, and accepted my presence among them. Then they killed seals as they had always killed seals, until all that was white – snow and ice and bear and seal – was crimson.

“Then the water opened close to shore, and the ducks and geese came. The seabirds nested. The demons – and the angels – left me alone then.”

Solitaire, solitaire.

“
Non
, not alone,” I murmur, but the Franciscan does not hear me.

I would sit within the cave and stroke the ebony feather, listening to its rasp. I would call him to me. And he would come. Silently, out of the grey smoke, he would come and slip beneath the furs to lie beside me on the pink rock.

L'esprit. L'amour. Le compagnon.

I feel again the touch of his lips, the rough skin of his fingertips, the silkiness of his hair on my face. I feel the smooth muscles of his arms and legs, the strength of his back, the filling of the hollowness within.

I smell the scent of his skin, like clean dry moss.

He never said a word, nor did he smile. I was careful, very careful, because sometimes I would reach out for him and my hands would grasp only furs or my fingers would slip through his chest and he would vanish into the smoke of the fire. I tried not to fall asleep, because when I awoke he would be gone and I would be alone. Always.

Solitaire, solitaire.

“
Oui
,” I say. “Alone. Always.”

“But God was with you, Marguerite. God was always with you.”

I wake in the garret, the feel of rough granite beneath my fingertips. The cave? Or the Church of the Innocents? But I smell moss, not blood. I reach for the ebony feather, hoping to call him to me, but he is distant now. Too far away to call back. He cannot come to me in this place.

I stand and light a candle, then see luminous green eyes at the open window. I creep toward the cat. Wary, she remains still, tail swishing from side to side. Her swollen belly stands out from her thin
body. Very, very slowly I reach out. When my fingers are only inches from her yellow head she flees, bouncing away on her stiff hind leg.

I search until I find a bit of cheese to leave on the windowsill.

It is the sabbath. I am free of the girls and I am free of Thevet. I walk the muddy paths through the woods and fields outside Nontron, hoping to hear the soft beat of ebony wings. I discovered when I returned to France that ravens speak the same language here as there, and crows speak a similar dialect. It is like comparing the
patois
of Angoulême to that of Périgueux.

The crows are nearly as clever as the ravens. They follow the farmers when they sow barley and rye. The farmers turn on them and flap their arms as if they too would fly away, but as soon as the men turn their backs the crows return. Then the farmers make their children stand in the fields to shoo away the birds.

The crows return now, on the sabbath, when the farmers and their children are in church, or indoors. The morning sun gives their black feathers an emerald sheen. The birds eat greedily, and I am tempted to join them, to pick up the grain and grind it into flour. On the island I had no bread, and now I cannot get enough.

I step into the dark comfort of the woods and am
surrounded by tall maples and beeches, branches newly leaved. I breathe in the fragrance of green. Studying a new maple leaf, I trace the intricate lines within, stroke its softness, and put it to my cheek.

Ravens gather in the trees above,
quorking
and
pruking
their greetings. I hear their wings, like welcoming whispers, rustling, sliding, rasping. Their claws scrape lightly as they grip the bark. One shuffles along a branch, then wipes her thick bill near her feet. They ruffle their feathers, then settle them again, knowing that I mean them no harm, that I have come only to rest in their company. I listen to their soft conversation,
km-mm-mm
, and know they will ask me no questions.

I am startled then to see Monsieur Lafrenière on the path. His lanky frame strides toward me. When he raises an arm and waves, the ravens rise silently into the crystalline sky and are gone. I turn and hurry away, pretending I have not seen him. I do not look back or slow my pace until I have climbed the stairs to my garret.

Gasping for breath, I fling open the door. The yellow-striped cat is curled on the bed. She jumps down. Body held low, her belly nearly dragging the floor, she slinks out through the window.

I close the window. I will not think of Lafrenière. Instead I study the small circles of glass, tinted blue-green, as if the glass contains the sea. And then I think of the cat. She was sleeping on my bed. Her eyes held wariness, but she was
on my bed
. I open the window, hoping she will return.

There is a loud banging at the door. “Madame de Roberval,” he calls out in a loud whisper. “Please, I must speak with you.”

I say nothing. What can this man want from me?

“I know you are in there. Please, come to the door.” His voice is urgent.

“
Non
, I will not,” I say through the door.

They taunt me then:
Propriety. Une femme solitaire. Un homme. Cark-cark-cark. Scandalous.

They know I care nothing for propriety. But neither does Lafrenière – or he would not come to my garret, alone, to see me. Yet I am grateful to the voices: they have given me reason to send him away.

“I am alone,” I say. “You must go away.” I put my ear to the door to listen for footsteps descending the stairs. I hear only the shout of a child from the street below and the distant voice of a robin, its thin warble repeated again and again.

Finally he answers, “That is not why I have come, Madame de Roberval. If you wish we can walk abroad where everyone can see us. But I will not leave until I have spoken to you.”