Silence of Stone by Annamarie Beckel Read Free Book Online Page B

his heel and disembarked. One of his own men rowed him back to his ship.
    By dawn Cartier and his ships were gone, vanished into darkness and grey fog.
    Marguerite was now even more heartsick and terrified, worried not only about her and Michel, but about the fate of the entire colony. If the great adventurer Jacques Cartier had abandoned the expedition, what hope was there for them?
    Michel tried to reassure her. Roberval is a cruel man, he acknowledged, but King François must have had sound reasons for making your uncle Viceroy of New France. He is a hard leader, but he must know what he is doing.
    Did he know what he was doing when he slapped me? she retorted. What does my uncle know of growing grain and raising sheep? Of Indians? And what about us, Michel? What will he do to us?
    Marguerite and Michel did their best to stay out of sight and to avoid provoking the viceroy, but in his fury at Cartier, Roberval seemed to have forgotten them. He did not, as they had expected, put them onto separate ships, and he said nothing more to Marguerite about marriage. In fact, he hardly spoke to her at all.
    Foolishly Marguerite imagined that her uncle was reconsidering, that his heart was softening.
    La demoiselle naïve. La demoiselle bête.
    â€œ
Oui
,” I answer, “she was a stupid, stupid girl.”
    Roberval’s discipline became even more severe. He allowed only selected nobles to go ashore, and he regularly threatened the felons with hanging. He swore that King François himself would hang Jacques Cartier when he arrived in France.
    How the king would know that Cartier had defied the viceroy, Marguerite wasn’t sure, but then she quickly realized that Cartier assumed they would all die: the fate of the colony would vindicate his decision.
    Finally, after nearly four weeks in St. John’s, Roberval’s ships departed for Charlesbourg Royal.
    I hear a loud thumping. The Franciscan, his arm raised, blocks the light from the doorway. His cassock snaps in the wind. “Have you forgotten our meeting?” Annoyance rides high atop his words.
    â€œI have forgotten everything…and nothing.”
    â€œDo not be coy,” he says. His hat bobs, the wide brim caught by the wind. Thevet removes it to swipe a sleeve across his damp brow. He stinks of sweat and impatience. “Let us proceed at once to the chapel.” He re-positions his hat, then turns and strides away, assuming my assent.
    I watch the billowing cassock recede and consider again the order from King François II. Reluctantly I stand and follow.
    Outside, the sky is a smooth undappled grey. A few fat raindrops strike my face. This wind is nothing. I have walked in winds so fierce I could not breathe, winds that drove ice pellets into my face so that my reddened cheeks stung for hours, winds so cold my eyelashes froze, stitched together by my tears.
    This wind is nothing. Nothing. The Franciscan is nothing.
    Keeping a hand on his hat, André Thevet looks from one side to the other, uneasy to be in Nontron, where, despite Henri’s
Chambre Ardente
and Catherine de Medici’s harsh measures, there are many Huguenots. A few men and women stare at the monk as he passes. Everyone in Nontron knows why he is here, and they wonder what I am telling him, if I am answering the questions they are too timid to ask themselves.
    A skeletal cur creeps out from an alley. She follows Thevet, snarling and snapping at his heels. He kicks her away, fear pulling hard at his mouth.
    I know the bitch from my nighttime wanderings. Like me, she is hungry, but harmless.
    Thevet hurries into the sanctuary of the chapel. Out of breath and puffing, he kneels before the crucifix and crosses himself. He gives me a sidelong glance, expecting me to do the same.
    Quiet laughter echoes off the stone wall behind the cross:
Hear, O Lord, my prayer…Turn not thy face from me.
I hear ravens calling:
cark-cark-cark.
    The Franciscan does not hear, and he