Silence of Stone (8 page)

“
Oui
.” But there was only silence and Damienne's
whimpering sobs in the boat that took them ashore. No music, just the quiet dipping of oars in dark water, the creaking of wood against wood, the oarsman's grunts, the scrape of the boat against rock when they landed. The oarsman hastily unloaded their meagre provisions, his eyes flinching away from theirs to scan the rocky shore and barren hills, as if he expected to see the Devil himself.

The three said nothing as they watched the boat return to the
Vallentyne
, nothing as they watched the sails of the ship disappear.

Still disbelieving, Marguerite poked among the provisions piled upon the rocks: torn sails, hemp rope, an axe, mallet, and bucket of nails, three arquebuses, powder, and shot, fishing line and hooks, an iron pot, two baskets of hard bread and a small cask of salt beef. Slowly the realization came to her that her uncle had been planning this punishment for days, perhaps weeks. In cold and calculating measures he had drawn up his list and made ready his retribution for her disobedience. How could she have imagined his heart was softening? The screeching gulls mocked her.

Le comportement indécent. Le scandale. Abandoned. Punished.

The twelfth day of July in 1542: the day that Roberval abandoned Marguerite, Michel, and Damienne on the Isle of Demons.

The twelfth day of July in 1542: the day that King François I declared war on the Holy Roman Empire – and lost all interest in Roberval's adventures
in New France.

I hear ravens murmuring:
km-mm-mm.

“His name, Marguerite. What was his name?”

Terrified, Marguerite tried to draw comfort from Michel. Roberval would not truly abandon you, his beloved cousin, he reasoned. A few days to show you his outrage, a week at most. He smiled then. The viceroy has called this place the Isle of Demons only to frighten us, he said, trying to laugh. In just a few days Roberval will send a ship. You will see.

Marguerite did not contradict him, but she did her own calculations: two baskets of hard bread, a cask of salt beef, fishing line and hooks, three muskets, powder, and shot. Roberval did not intend to return for them soon.

“His name, Marguerite. What was his name?”

“
Le jeune homme bête.
”

“Stupid young man,” Thevet repeats pointedly. “Very well then. You force me to inform King François of your disobedience.” The monk heaves an angry frustrated sigh, reaches for a knife, and begins to sharpen quills. He believes he is giving me time to reflect upon my recalcitrance.

I float above and consider the balding circle at the crown of his head. I see the short list he has made on his paper:
mid-summer, Isle of Demons, Damienne, arquebus, hard bread, citre
. I see myself rocking back and forth, wringing my hands, trying to hold securely between my palms the memories I dare not release to the Franciscan. If I do not keep my hands clutched tightly together, they might reach for his
throat, and then, I could not stop them.

A thumb unclenches. A memory slips out through the tiny gap.

While Marguerite and Damienne huddled together, Michel searched the shore and then assured them he'd seen no signs of wolves, monsters, or Indians. No signs of demons.

But I have found a level grassy place at the bottom of an inlet, he said. There is a stream with sweet water. I can use the sails to build shelters there.

When Marguerite bent to lift a basket of biscuit, Michel leapt forward and stayed her hands.
Non
,
non
, he said, this is not work for a lady. I will move everything.

So while Marguerite and Damienne followed behind, holding their skirts high above the clear green water threatening to lap at their toes, Michel carried the basket of hard bread the short distance to the inlet. Damienne's trembling fingers clung to Marguerite's arm as they watched him make trip after trip, until everything had been moved. Michel grabbed the axe then and strode off. He returned with stout poles he'd cut from trees in a narrow valley farther inland. Using the poles and the hemp rope, he built two rough shelters from the torn sails. By the time he had finished, the sky behind them was a rosy pink.

There is much sweet water, he said, everywhere, and I've seen the trails of rabbits. And foxes. No sign of
les sauvages
. We will be fine.

Michel made a fire from driftwood and dry
boughs, and they supped that evening on hard bread and salt beef.

Beneath a cobalt sky and an iron sickle of moon, they retired to canvas shelters and make-shift beds. Giving his sabre to Damienne, Michel took with him his arquebus and dagger.

He whispered assurances to Marguerite and tried to soothe her, but she was too frightened to find comfort in his caresses, too fretful to respond to his kisses.

Eventually the rhythmic slap of wave on rock lulled them to sleep, an uneasy slumber soon disturbed by eerie warbling cries riding atop the wind's soft breath. Damienne scrambled from her shelter into theirs. Michel readied one of the muskets, and Marguerite, fearing demons, grabbed her New Testament and prayed. Clutching the sabre, Damienne sat and moaned, her wails nearly as loud as the warbling cries.

In the morning, Damienne could not be persuaded to venture outside. Despite both her and Michel's protests, Marguerite insisted upon going with Michel to explore the island, to discover its inhabitants, hostile or otherwise. After a hasty breakfast of hard bread and water, they set out, armed with an arquebus, fusil, and dagger.

Less than twenty-five fathoms from the shelters, they found a quiet pool where a pair of sleek black and white birds glided, low and silent upon the water. When one opened its pointed black bill and released a demonic warble, they realized that the birds were
the source of the night's haunting calls. They laughed nervously to each other and spoke of Damienne's relief when they told her.

Laboriously loading the musket, Michel shot at one of the birds, but both dived, and neither he nor Marguerite could see where they surfaced again.

Would you teach me? Marguerite asked.

Michel shook his head.
Non
, it would not be proper.

But it would be good if both of us to knew how to shoot, she protested, in case of wild animals or Indians or…

Michel looked off in the distance, sighed, and then handed her the musket. Marguerite could hardly lift the heavy weapon. Thirteen steps to load and shoot, pouring and tamping powder, fire-steel at hand to light the fuse. And the same for the smaller gun, the fusil. They did not yet worry about conserving powder and shot.

I hear the explosion of the long musket and feel the tremendous recoil against my shoulder, the jolt pulling me back into my body, back into the Franciscan's agitated presence. Sharpening his quills, Thevet has remained unusually silent.

After the shooting lesson, Michel and Marguerite returned to tell a sceptical Damienne about the birds. Still, she would not budge from the shelter.

Michel and Marguerite continued their explorations. Near shore they found small patches of scraggly spruce and fir, all bent away from the sea as if repulsed, or afraid. Taller trees grew in the valleys,
trunks close and branches interlaced as if embracing each other. Michel and Marguerite came upon wet grassy meadows dotted with daisies and buttercups, and they discovered mossy bogs with scattered low shrubs bearing bright pink blossoms. The soft green moss exuded a fragrance Marguerite found peculiar but pleasant, an aroma both clean and musky.

Startling them, a partridge burst from the dense shrubs growing at the edge of a bog, but was gone too quickly for Michel even to raise the fusil.

They climbed the high granite domes in the centre of the island and from there surveyed their domain. From that vantage point, the island looked like one solid rock, an ancient turtle's arched back laced with grey and red ridges. Dark pools and bogs lay in the depressions; short trees stood thick in the valleys. They could see at least a dozen rocky islands nearby, as well as scores of smaller ones, some no more than an outcropping of stone in a sparkling sea.

Michel rotated in a complete circle, then pulled at his dark beard. I believe we are standing on the largest island, he said, perhaps two miles long and about the same wide, though it is hard to judge.

He held both arms straight out, then brought an open hand to his brow. All to the south and east, he said, reckoning by the sun.

They turned. To the northwest, at least two or three miles distant, they could see a larger landmass. Another island? New France? They couldn't tell.

No matter what direction they turned, however, they could see no white sails.

In all of their explorations, and much to every-one's relief, Marguerite and Michel saw no signs of demons or Indians, and Michel tried not to worry that he'd also seen little in the way of animal tracks or spoor, only a few trails made by rabbits and foxes.

Later that day, Michel used the fishing line and hooks, baiting the hook with a tiny scrap of salt beef. His catch was meagre, two flatfish, which they roasted over the fire, along with a few whelks Marguerite had collected in the pools left by the retreating tide.

That evening Michel set snares in the runs he'd seen, and by dawn two rabbits dangled in leather nooses. Marguerite, after she'd gathered her hair within her pearl snood and fashioned a bonnet against the sun, allowed herself a brief and delicate sorrow for their large amber eyes.

Michel dressed the rabbits, running his dagger the length of their tawny bellies and tossing the bowels to the screeching gulls. They roasted the slender bodies and picked apart the flesh with their fingers. Certain they'd be on the island only a few more days at most, Michel did not bother to save the skins or the bones.

La folie. La stupidité. How long, O Lord? How long?

The scrape of the Franciscan's knife against the quill's nib punctuates the words and chuckling laughter. The monk does not look up from his work. He is giving me more time to contemplate her sins – and mine.

Marguerite prayed. Every morning and evening
she prayed for their rescue. She sang the psalms she'd learned as a child.

Her sweet voice sounds in my head:
I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer. My God is my helper, and in him will I put my trust.

Other voices join in a mocking chorus:
My strength. My deliverer. Kek-kek-kek. Km-mm-mm.

“My strength,” I mutter. Thevet looks up from his quills, his broad pig's forehead furrowed. I study my clasped hands.

How long, O Lord? How long? Saved by our grace, not God's.

Over the next few days Damienne, who refused to venture more than a hundred paces from the shelters, began grumbling incessantly. She had an endless stream of laments. The salt meat is nearly gone, she fretted, and we have only tasteless rabbit, stringy partridge, fish, and hard bread. No wine, no cheese, no nuts of any kind. And the few berries I've found are hard and sour. And probably poisonous, she added.

She complained about sleeping on the hard ground and about the bugs that descended whenever the wind stilled. Their droning whine and stinging bites sometimes drove them all into the stifling heat of the canvas shelters, faces and hands covered with angry red welts.

Damienne gasped and trembled at every loud noise, and although they'd heard in the night only the quavering calls of the black and white birds, the sighing wind, and the rhythmic slap of waves,
Damienne spoke often of her terror of wild animals and monsters, demons and
les sauvages
.

But Michel and I have walked all over the island and seen no sign of demons or Indians, Marguerite insisted, annoyed that Damienne's chatter brought to mind fears she had worked to banish. Marguerite had willed herself to trust what Michel had said: her uncle had called this place the Isle of Demons only to frighten them, and he would not allow his beloved cousin to die.

For her and for Michel, now convinced of Roberval's imminent return, their abandonment became the great adventure. They began to think of themselves as Adam and Eve in the garden. The skies remained a crystalline blue; golden grasses and white daisies bowed and danced in a gentle wind. Michel played his citre under the open sky, the soft notes of love songs blending with the piping of grey and white birds and the soughing trees.

And they loved. Marguerite and Michel loved within the canvas shelter and on the soft dry mosses; they loved in the broad meadows where the wind dried their sweat-slicked bodies. There was no one but Damienne to see or to hear, and they loved openly and wildly, sometimes pretending they were deer.

They were ravenous for each other. They could not love enough, and no part of Marguerite remained untouched by Michel's tongue, and she tasted him, salt and berries. She breathed in the grassy fragrance of his skin together with the scents of sweet mosses
and pungent fir.

In the rain pocking on the window, I hear drumming on canvas. I feel Michel's smooth belly against her back, his fingers teasing nipples thirsty for the touch of his tongue, his hardness against her. Strong hands grasp her hips and pull her to him. Her back arches as he enters from behind. Later, standing, her soft skin scrapes against hard rock, not caring, because her legs are wrapped around his waist, his mouth is on her neck as he plunges into the greedy hollow within.

I close my eyes and recall sitting astride, breasts bared to the sun's lecherous eye, breath coming in gasps, crying out to the taffeta clouds above. My eyes flutter open.

The Franciscan is staring at me, his face pinched, his hands folded over his cock. He picks up a quill and dips it into black ink. “And that is when your young man built the canvas shelter?”

“He built two. But the wind was the serpent.”

“The serpent?”

“The serpent in the garden.”

Thevet arches a thick eyebrow. “And you, no doubt, were the temptress.” He comes around the desk to stand before me, too close. I can smell the stale wool of his cassock, his sour skin.