Silence of Stone Read Online Free PDF Page B

vanished?”
    His hands flutter. “Records are often incomplete, pages missing.”
    My voice is weary of talking, and I am weary of Thevet. I have said far too much already, but I must say one thing more. “It was Roberval who destroyed the records.”
    â€œTo what end?”
    â€œTo hide the identity of Marguerite’s husband.”
    â€œWhy would he do that?”
    â€œBecause he feared that her husband’s family would bring a suit against him.”
    â€œBut Roberval was viceroy. He was the law.”
    â€œThey are nobles. They could have brought apetition to King François.”
    His tawny eyes pull away from me, and I know he is struggling to solve the puzzle. What family in France, he is asking himself, is so powerful they would dare to bring a petition against Roberval to King François?
    I offer Thevet these parting words: “None of the men on your list was Marguerite’s husband.”

    The noose dangles empty. The striped cat is shrewd. I re-set the snare, then wrap myself in a blanket and sit near the fire, fingers drumming, drumming, drumming against my thigh. The Franciscan’s questions have breathed life into small dusty carcasses that had lain amidst ashes and rotting earth. Words, memories, images buzz like so many dung-covered flies, a humming din in my head:
La belle fille. Innocente. L’amour, le désir. Pearly bones. Dead eye to bloody sky. La culpabilité. Grievous sin. Impardonnable. Km-mm-mm.
    A spider weaves her web among faggots stacked near the hearth. Her legs move gracefully, embroidering one silky strand to another, and I listen for the song as her legs pluck each delicate string – a simple melody, like one of Michel’s
chansons
. The spider is ravenous for small creatures, but meticulous and patient in setting her snare, and I decide to release to her the buzzing winged beasts hovering in my head. She will catch them and bind them, then eat them ather leisure, and they will be gone from me.
    My first offering is a slender blue damselfly, wings like silver gossamer. “
L’amour
,” I say quietly.
    La putain. La meurtrière. Murderer. Le sang rouge.
    â€œ
L’amour
,” I shout out loud to silence the other voices.
    In their first few days at sea, Marguerite and Damienne walked about on deck, bored and fretful, wary of the wind and waves. Though familiar with the stink of pigs and chickens, Marguerite now proclaimed the odours offensive, and she walked with a lavender-scented handkerchief pressed to her nose. To keep her hair from tangling in the wind, she confined her chestnut curls within a fine mesh snood sewn with pearls, and she scurried below when she thought the salt wind and sea spray too harsh on her skin. Amused by Marguerite’s pretensions, Damienne encouraged them nonetheless, suspecting that a certain young nobleman, who seemed to contrive for his path to cross theirs, might find them charming.
    Marguerite had known men who were far more handsome, her uncle among them, but Michel’s face, unblemished by pox and with pointed dark beard neatly trimmed, pleased her. His grin, which came easily and often, transformed his somewhat ordinary comeliness into a portrait that made the articulate Marguerite stumble on her words.
    He’d trained only briefly as a soldier, and though neither lazy nor profligate, he carefully explained, he had found himself ill-suited to the military life, a life of discipline and obedience. His family, likeMarguerite’s, was noble but poor.
    Michel thumped a fist to his heart. But I will make a new fortune in New France, he proclaimed, Roberval has promised us that. Gold and precious jewels lying upon the ground for the taking, the viceroy says.
    But
les sauvages
, Damienne whispered. What about them?
    Michel waved a hand, dismissing her concerns. There are many soldiers among us, he said, with guns. The Indians will not be a problem. And when they see what