Bride of New France (12 page)

After Laure recounts each plan for their future, Madeleine replies in the same way. “That sounds like a wonderful life, Laure. If it is meant to be, God will grant us what we need.”

Laure can’t think of any reason why God wouldn’t want them to become renowned seamstresses. She really wishes that Madeleine could muster a little more enthusiasm about their futures. Instead she seems only to be interested in praying and in the banal routine of their paltry existence at the hospital. Perhaps it is because Madeleine has always lived under the strict rules of an institution and has not seen that it is possible to live another life, one that is not controlled each moment by religious superiors.

Still, Laure cannot imagine waking each day in the meagre light and fetid stench of the dormitory room without seeing the gentle face of her dearest friend. Leaving Madeleine is the hardest part of being banished to Canada by the Superior. Much of Laure’s thoughts in the past weeks have been preoccupied with how to get Madeleine to accompany her. She knows that somehow the trip, the banishment, will be less agonizing if her friend is with her. Tonight, while she was reciting the act of contrition to the others, it came to Laure how she would get Madeleine to come. She has decided to tell Madeleine the one story she knows about Canada.

Laure waits until most of the girls have stopped whispering and there is the sound in the dormitory of deep breaths. She then tells Madeleine that she has a very important story she would like to share with her, that it is a story written by a Queen. She heard it when she was a servant in Madame d’Aulnay’s house. Madeleine expresses the same peaceful indifference each time Laure mentions her years with Madame d’Aulnay. She feels no envy toward Laure for the enchanting life she had as a young
girl living with a wealthy woman in the city while Madeleine was a poor inhabitant of a Sulpicien monastery in Aunis.

“What an exciting life you have already lived, Laure. Tell me about this Queen and her stories,” Madeleine says, accustomed to these late-night interruptions to her prayers and sleep.

Laure tells Madeleine that the story was from a book written by a French Queen, Marguerite de Navarre. One of Madame d’Aulnay’s afternoon visitors brought over the book, and the women sat together reading the stories. “Madame d’Aulnay said that the Queen of Navarre had been too clever for a woman. A monk who lived during her time thought that the Queen should be thrown into a sack and dropped into the Seine for writing such stories, but that never happened, because the Queen was too well loved.” Laure can feel her cheeks start to burn as she lays the foundation for what she really wants to express to her friend. Will Madeleine who is always so kind and gentle grow angry for once at being asked to go to Canada? Does she love Laure enough to make such a tremendous sacrifice?

“The story the Queen wrote was about a young woman named Marguerite who travelled to Canada. The Marguerite in the Queen’s story went to Canada a long time ago, before there were any towns or soldiers in that place. There weren’t any other women from France living there yet.”

“It must have been even more frightening in those times,” Madeleine says.

“Yes, there were no houses, no churches, only the Savages and the jungle. She travelled with the adventurer Jacques Cartier, who was seeking gold and a way to China. But you will see, she was a very brave woman.”

Laure pauses as she hears footsteps in the hallway outside the dormitory. It is probably Madame Gage or one of the
officers coming to check that the girls are sleeping. In the distance, from another dormitory, Laure can make out the faint sound of a woman screaming. If one stops to listen, the muffled cries of the mad and infirm women of the other dormitories can be heard at intervals throughout the night as well as during the day.

“The Marguerite in the story had been a real woman who travelled with her husband on a ship to Canada. Not like the girls they are sending from here that don’t yet have husbands.”

Madeleine interrupts Laure to say that she never wants to get married like the girl Marguerite.

“The husband isn’t really the point of the story, except to show that women can be faithful both to men and to God.”

Madeleine nods and goes on listening.

“So this Marguerite follows her husband, who was an artisan, probably a shoe cobbler because Madame du Clos has told me that this is a necessary trade in new lands where people must first do much walking in order to finally settle somewhere. So Marguerite follows her husband the shoe cobbler onto a ship. Onboard the ship, the husband gets into trouble, for it is the nature of men to get into trouble when they travel to foreign places.”

Madeleine asks Laure what kind of trouble the husband gets into.

Laure says she isn’t sure exactly except that the cobbler had betrayed his master in some way that involved the native Savages. “I cannot imagine what sort of betrayal except it would surely have been bad to trust those people as they do not speak French nor are they Catholic.”

“Are the Savages of Canada Protestants? In La Rochelle, there are many Protestants,” Madeleine says.

“The Savages of Canada are not even Protestants but something far worse, closer to country witches with incantations and potions of mysterious poisons,” Laure explains. “The captain of the ship, Roberval, discovered the cobbler’s betrayal of his master and decided to hang him. But his wife, Marguerite, pleaded instead that her husband be allowed to live and that the two of them be dropped from the ship onto an uninhabited island of Canada.”

“It is natural that a woman should try to keep her husband from hanging, even though he has been disloyal,” Madeleine says.

Laure then tells Madeleine that the wife asked the captain, before he dropped them on the island, to give them only the subsistence they would need: some wine, bread, maybe some seeds for the next growing season, and the Bible. Her husband also wanted to take his arquebus with him.

“But what would she do with a Bible if there was no priest there to read it for her?” Madeleine asks.

“This woman could read the Bible on her own,” Laure says. “And so the couple was dropped, by the Sieur de Roberval, onto the island in Canada. They set about right away to build some sort of a hut in the jungle.”

“But I thought Canada is a cold place and not a jungle,” Madeleine says.

“The Queen didn’t know that when she wrote the story, as she had never been to Canada herself. When the lions and other beasts come for the couple, they fight them off, the man with his arquebus and the woman with her stones. They even kill a few of the creatures to eat. At night by the light of their fire, the woman reads the Bible to her husband. But he grows weaker on their diet of meat and on the putrid water of Canada. He
eventually bloats up and dies. Marguerite buries him as best she can, but the wretched island beasts dig up his body. They drag it past her in their fierce mouths trying to shake her faith now that she is alone, but for the comfort of her Bible.

“But Marguerite persevered with her prayers and songs in exaltation of God. She fed her body meagre portions of whatever roots and fruits she found on the island, and her spirit drank in the results of her prayers. In the spring a ship came for her. She was brought back to France and introduced to the Queen.”

Laure takes Madeleine’s hand in hers. “The girl in the story is like you. She was brave and loyal and believed above all else that God would look after the couple in their time of need.”

By the time Laure finishes telling Madeleine the story, there is only silence around them in the hospital. The madwomen have been calmed for the night, the officers and governesses retired to their rooms. A few minutes later, when Laure thinks that she is the only one left awake in the room, Madeleine takes her hand and whispers in her ear.

“I will join you in your banishment. Tomorrow, let’s talk to Madame du Clos and Madame Gage to see if I can come with you to Canada.”

    8    

T
he sixty or so girls leaving Paris for Canada hear Mass in the chapel of the Salpêtrière at three o’clock on the morning of their departure. Laure and Madeleine are the only girls leaving from the Sainte-Claire dormitory. Madame Gage came to get them from their bed and whispered for them to follow her out to the main hallway where the other girls were gathered. Dozens of others have been recruited from the less reputable dormitories. None of the women look much older than thirty, although most seem older than Laure and Madeleine. Some of their faces are meek and dull as if they are still asleep, while others are filled with the wide-eyed rage of the slightly mad. Laure and Madeleine try to avoid meeting their eyes. All share a fear of the tremendous journey that lies ahead.

At four o’clock, following the Mass, the women trudge in silence along the same river path Laure took to get to the Hôtel-Dieu. A brigade of archers, some on horseback, follows them, making the journey feel like a prison escort. Just south of the Bièvre Bridge, they meet up with about thirty more girls from la Pitié. The governesses from the Salpêtrière who have
accompanied them have given them strict orders to stay away from these
filles de mauvaise vie
. A few of the Pitié girls are weeping, but most stand waiting with stoic faces and don’t look very different from the Salpêtrière convoy, although these women are all chained together at the waist like prostitutes.

It takes a long time for the men to prepare the barge on the Seine that will take the girls down the river to Rouen and beyond to the port at Le Havre, where they will board the ship to Canada. There is much shouting and shifting of supplies as they work to secure the load. The whole time the men scramble from the pier to the boat, heaving food for their journey and their marriage coffers onto the barge. The girls are ordered to remain quiet.

Laure wonders why they are leaving so early in the morning, why there is so much secrecy behind their departure, and why nobody wants to speak to them about the trip to Canada. The officers from the Salpêtrière and from la Pitié, many of whom Laure has not seen before, say they don’t know anything about crossing the seas, about living in Canada—that it is men and foreigners who do these things. One of the girls in the line, with a vicious face and scraggly hair, says that they have been given something worse than a death sentence. An archer orders her to be quiet.

Over an hour passes before the girls can finally board. It is May and still quite cold before the sun rises, especially when rain begins to fall in a cold mist over them. As they step onto the barge, the officers of the Salpêtrière lead them in singing
Veni Creator
. The boat has been divided into two sections by hay piled high, and covered in canvas: one side is for the girls from the Salpêtrière and the other for those from la Pitié. Their coffers have been placed at the centre of the boat.

Once Madeleine had agreed to come to Canada with Laure, they went to Madame du Clos and asked her to convince Madame Gage and the Superior that both girls should go. Madame du Clos assured the women that there were other seamstresses who could perform as well in her workshop as the two departing girls and that the productivity the hospital director demanded would not suffer because two of the best girls were leaving. Madame du Clos pretended that Madeleine was also an ill-behaved girl, that she and Laure were both more trouble than they were worth, and that she was glad to see them go. Madame Gage knew that this was not true, that Madeleine was an exemplary girl and that Madame du Clos was fond of both of them, but she remained quiet. Still, the Superior had argued against sending Madeleine, saying she didn’t want to see one of the best girls they had in a hospital of useless wretches sent off to Canada. The purpose of their agreement with the King, after all, was to send the worst possible women from the hospital to Canada. In the end it was Madeleine who had convinced the Superior, by vowing she would cause trouble in the dormitory if she were left behind. The Superior had called Madeleine a fool for throwing away her life to please a troublemaker like Laure and had agreed that Canada was the best place for both of them.